


How to Decorate a Dorm Room || Golden Child

by FromMyLibrary



Series: The Genius Factory [3]
Category: Golden Child (Korea Band), Lovelyz
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Art, Art Theft, Boarding School, Dark Academia, Enemies to Friends, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Golcha world domination, Heist, If I do say so myself, Theft, except its awkward to misinterpreted agitation to enemies to reluctant art theft partners to friends, golcha, hormonal drama, i love noir, please, someone love noir with me, which is a much better relationship progression, why hasn't my Take A Leap album come yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 55,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24929425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromMyLibrary/pseuds/FromMyLibrary
Summary: 3rd installment of the Genius Factory series. Dark academica and heist aesthetic. School years are 1998-1995.Seungmin isn't so sure about his new mysterious roommate who always seem to be doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time, the girl they somehow stumbled across in the basement setting fire to a mural, or the state of their disastrously pedestrian dorm room. But hey, art bonds people and they decide to take the matter of White Collar decorating into their own hands.Mostly centered around Seungmin, Tag, and Sujeong.
Series: The Genius Factory [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638610
Comments: 62
Kudos: 9





	1. First Impressions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theinvisiblefangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisiblefangirl/gifts).



Tag came vaulting into the dorm, all long legs and sweeping bangs with the light from the window glinting off his lip ring, and threw his duffel onto the floor with a thud. As it hit the sandalwood floor boards, a faint plume of dust erupted from underneath, little particles visible in the sunlight if you looked hard enough. He looked up from his monogrammed luggage, a black YST to find a boy laid on one of the beds, one of the four posters adorned with a perfectly ironed dark green blazer. The boy was tiny, legs folded into himself and arms wound around a thick, heavy book which Tag vaguely wondered might weigh more than the body holding it. his eyes then trained across the space, from the wool sock laden foot of his brand new roommate to the crisp white bed skirts dusting the floor, to the small stained glass rosettes at the top of each of their three windows. 

“Is this it?” he murmured to himself. 

The boy hummed in a loose acknowledgement, not looking up.

“Is this really it?” he asked again, louder. 

“Is what it?”

Tag motioned silently to the room, the walls, the floor, the other. “Everything,” he huffed. 

The other boy narrowed his eyes, back straightening and the soft curls of his bangs falling into his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” Tag shrugged. “I just expected… more?”

“We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere what _did_ you expect to find?”

Tag studied the boy now, really looked at him, not the tertiary glance he had sparred in his quick, and disappointing, survey of the room. 

“Name’s Youngtaek,” he said extending his hand. “Call me Tag.”

The boy hummed again, similar to the first noise Tag had heard come of his mouth but somehow weighted with even more disinterest. His eyes rested on Tag’s hand for a moment before looking back to his face. Tag raised his eyebrow and wiggled his extended palm in the air. 

“Seungmin,” the other said hesitantly grabbing his hand. 

“What department are you here for?” 

Seungmin’s eyes narrowed and took on a character of defence. Not that it mattered much but first year competition to enter their chosen disciplines usually ended with at least five candidates maimed, manic, or missing. And that was a healthy estimate. 

“Me? I’m gunning for bio-chem.” 

“Really?” Seungmin couldn’t help but laugh out. 

Tag’s cheery disposition didn’t waver and so Seungmin decided to meet him. “I’m going for economics.” 

The noise of sympathetic horror this elicited from Tag was not all that surprising to Seungmin but the blatantly unveiled action did catch him off guard a bit. 

“Second year econ’s a bitch.” 

“I know,” Seungmin replied steady and confident before catching something on his roommate’s face. “What’s with the uh-?” he nodded to Tag’s lip piercing. 

“Oh, I hate it,” he laughed. “Drove my mother insane though.”

“It’s very…” Seungmin attempted to reply before the words failed him and he decided to give the other an awkward smile instead. 

“Thank you,” the other nodded as if he understand a word Seungmin himself didn’t even grasp. 

And yes, if Seungmin was wondering if this little interaction the two of them exchanged could possibly get anymore unnerving, it could. It wasn’t Tag, okay it may have been Tag. He had no doubt the other meant well, but at Genius that didn’t always apply and was often wrong. Maybe it was the so casually swept hair that dusted his perfectly proportioned forehead or the gleaming chaos which seemed to sparkle unbridle in his eyes, but Tag was… pretty unnerving. At least for now.  
The silence which sat in between them was only punctured by shoes scuffing in the halls and feet pounding up and down the staircases of the building. No doubt separated friends and whatnot throwing themselves into each other’s arms after months spent away, summering in Bali or the Turks and Caicos, perhaps the occasion St. Moritz. 

“You – uh, know anyone here?” Seungmin managed to ask the other first year. 

“My cousin Ha Sungwoon graduated two years ago. Bio-Chem. Nine fingers.” 

Seungmin bristled at the number but Tag showed no signs of elaborating. “Was that before or after he came to Genius?” 

Tag apparently thought that question was very funny and chuckled in response, not even bothering to answer the poor kid’s question. 

“So uh…” Tag started, moving to flop onto the free mattress along the other wall. “What about you?” 

“Do I know anyone here?” Seungmin tried to clarify. 

“Yeah, you like a legacy or something? What’s your story?” 

“Isn’t that an invasive question?” Seungmin asked. 

“I don’t know, is it?” Tag threw back, a hint of teasing in his tone. 

Seungmin shrugged. “I guess it depends on what you decide to do with that information,” he said. “ _If_ I give it you, of course.” 

A blinding smile erupted on Tag’s face, stretching from pearly white tooth to pearly white tooth and spanning an impossible distance. “I like you!” 

“Thanks?” 

“Hey,” Tag threw out, uncuffing the silver links from the dress shirt he had worn to the commencement. “I got a friend. Junior. I’m having lunch with him. Come.” 

Seungmin smiled, rubbing the back of neck where his tie now sat atop the collar in a unkept noose he had been relaxing in ever since Tag showed up. 

“It’s just an offer. No worries.” 

“I kind of already promised someone I’d meet them,” Seungmin confessed. “But I appreciate it.” 

Tag waved him off with that signature grin still plastered to his ridiculously lucky face. Sure the kid was a little- and now was where Seungmin swore he needed to start mingling with the clandestine kids and their languages division- unnerving. But honestly, Tag looked like the kid who would charm all the money from out of your offshore account and the daughter from under your nose. 

Seungmin watched the boy shrug on a sweater over his ruffled shirt, now untucked and hanging haphazardly around the belt to his waistline. Tag paused at the door, gripping the bronze doorknob no doubt procured from an old estate somewhere in some corner of the globe, carved with a little rope pattern around its circumference and turned around. “They couldn’t have put in one van Beyeren?” 

The question seemed random, and specific, randomly specific. No, not random Seungmin realized after the challenge in tag’s eye became apparent: specifically random. 

“Tag, there are like 500 rooms here. I don’t think there _are_ 500 van Beyeren’s.” 

Tag smiled again, except this time Seungmin thought it looked a little more genuine and a little less Victor Lustig. 

“I didn’t say they all had to be van Beyeren,” Tag chuckled and then he was out the door. 

Seungmin laughed softly in the now quiet room, slumping back into his bed, back hitting the pillows with a light thud. He looked around the wood walls and at the sole framed picture of some famous someone or other and sighed. 

“He’s right. They really do need a better interior decorator,” he grumbled.


	2. Advice and Warnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First Heist is planned for ch. 6 right now :)

A first day at Genius, not that he hadn’t heard of it in stories for years, an exhausting amount of words through at and over his head since a young age, or seen it in the few photographs which surfaced of its obscured and vague archways and patches of grass and desks tucked into book lined corners. He wasn’t nervous per say, but it was an adjustment. Normally disgusting prestige and flouting one’s unpunishable nature were frowned upon in proper society, but here, well here they were encouraged. One felt naked without a signet or a golden chain wrapped round their wrist, without the haughty air of an heir or the extensive know how on the moral depravity it took to run everything upon which their lives were built. It wasn’t unfamiliar, no it was eerily likeminded to the life he had just left. 

But never, never, get comfortable enough to be placated. 

Seungmin bounded through the second wrong door on this way to meet the sole person he knew at Genius, a fourth year in the medical department who looked deceptively good-natured, at the dining hall. It was hard navigating an entire old castle-like bulwark of a school spanning the entire surface of the remote island whose hills and dips disoriented as all the stone washed into one giant mass of the same hue in the afternoon light. And this most certainly was not the dining hall; no, it was the lobby. Where his grand tour had all started that morning. But one thing had changed for certain, his new roommate was standing on an antique needlepoint chair he most definitely should not have been standing on with the blade of a knife kissing his tongue, eyes closed in concentration. 

“Are you licking a painting?” he blurted before the door even slammed shut behind him. 

Tag looked over his shoulder, without moving a muscle, delicately extracting the knife from his lips, and scoffed. “No. I’m flaking off the top layer of paint from the painting and tasting the knife I used,” he corrected. “It’s completely different.”

“Is it?”

Tag rolled his eyes and proceeding to draw his blade back up to the upper left hand corner of the painting, reaching out his arms across the landscape with a flourished sweep. 

“Stop?” Seungmin called out to him, unsure why he even had to say it to the other expecting Tag to stop the moment someone had walked in and caught him. 

“Did you know you can date it by the lead content?” Tag responded instead, adamantly refusing to halt his actions. 

“Yeah…” Seungmin drawled and then moved to cross his arms over his chest. “But why are you licking a painting?”

“Did I not just explain myself?” Tag exasperatedly answered. 

“How do you even know what lead tastes like?”

“How do you not know what lead tastes like?” his roommate shot back. 

“Why? Why do I have to deal with this?” Seungmin said softly to himself as he spun on his hell to find yet another door to walk through instead of having to deal with whatever was going on behind him at that moment. 

“I think I need a new roommate,” Seungmin muttered once he finally found the dining and sitting down between his old family friend Y and three other fourth years which seemed recognizable from pictures the former had showed him and that he didn’t bother to introduce himself to amidst his own personal crisis. 

“Hello?” one of the nameless, and quite frankly ridiculously good looking, boys greeted him once he had settled. 

Y paused with a dark black coffee right before his lips, the steam rolling off the cup and into his face in a gentle haze of warmth. “Guys, this is Seungmin,” he said placing the cup down to free a hand which he then placed on the younger’s shoulder. “Seungmin this is Heochan, Kuhn, and Jinhoo,” he gestured to the boys at the table. 

“I want a new roommate,” Seungmin said again to Y after nodding to the new faces and receiving their distracted acknowledgments back. 

“What makes you say that?” Y asked. 

“He’s one of those Factory legacies,” Seungmin continued thoughtfully. “You know how you can tell? I could tell.” 

“And…?” Heochan coaxed the younger to continue, and Seungmin would have thought he had kind eyes if his mind were not currently occupied by the scene he had witnessed on his way over. 

“And he’s weird!” Seungmin threw back. “I think he might shank me in my sleep?” he breathed like it was an obvious conclusion to be drawn.

Jinhoo tapped his chin and Seungmin vaguely registered the boy as Y’s roommate, the telltale fluffy brown hair falling around his forehead in slight waves. “Why does being a legacy make him violent?” 

“They’re bloodthirsty,” Seungmin responded. “All of them.” 

Y scrunched his eyebrow and moved his arms into a ‘what the hell’ gesture which extended out to his sides in a confused offense. “I’m a legacy?”

“You don’t count. I like you,” Seungmin waved him off. “Also he had monogrammed luggage.”

“Oof,” Kuhn exhaled in understanding with a nod of acknowledgment sent the first year’s direction. 

“What’s wrong with that?” Heochan questioned desperately. “I have monogrammed luggage?” 

“Oof,” Kuhn repeated directly into the other’s face. 

Jinhoo ignored the impending bickering which would inevitably be elicited from Kuhn and Heochan sharing a meal together and leaned forward onto the table propped by his elbows “What’s his name?” he asked. 

“Tag.”

“Oh, it’s Seungwoo’s cousin!” Heochan exclaimed, now halting the vicious glare he had been gifting to Kuhn in favour of the first year. 

“Yeah?” Seungmin hesitated. “That sounds right.” 

The elder then laughed with a abrupt snort at the end. “Good luck,” He said. 

Seungmin deflated and looked to Y for help. There was an equal mix of disgruntled agitation and a sorrowful plea gracing his eyes and Y sighed at the younger’s expression. 

“Heochan, don’t make fun of Seungmin,” he chided. 

“Me?!” said boy questioned. “I didn’t say anything!” he defended. 

Kuhn shovelled a forkful of salad into his mouth after mumbling. “Wish you never did.” 

Heochan balked and nudged the boy next to him. “Jinhoo!” he practically screeched. “Defend me?” 

“No, I’m good. Thanks though,” the other answered. 

“About my possibly murderous roommate…” Seungmin but in, returning his gaze to Y who was attempting to eat, text, and blatantly discount whatever was happening on the bench across from them. 

“You’re overreacting,” Y said. 

“Am I?” 

“If you really want you can sleep with Jinhoo and I tonight?” Y offered. 

“I thought I said I wanted not to die?” Seungmin huffed indignantly. “Didn’t you guess mix up your chemicals last year and manage to sear both your fingertips off? No thanks!” 

“Hello, yes,” Jinhoo raised his hand to grab Y’s attention. “Your roommate here, I do not remember agreeing to that.” 

As Y was responding about responsibility and whatnot, Kuhn pushed away from the table, elbowing Heochan in reminding, and shoulder on his backpack. A small detonator tumbled out of the unzipped top and fell into his half eaten salad with a gentle thunk. He picked it up, wiping off the dressing gingerly before Heochan then stood up and knocked the other’s arm. Kuhn’s hand slipped and pressed down the button. 

He paused. 

“Is that anything important?” Seungmin asked. 

“No…?” Kuhn responded failing to convince the first year. 

Heochan whipped toward them after picking up his books. “What’s not important?” 

Seungmin raised his eyebrow at the engineering student. “Am I going to hear about it on the news?”

Kuhn placed the device back into his bag and zipped it. “Probably not…”

“What’s on the news?” Heochan inquired again. 

Kuhn merely grabbed a fistful of the other fourth year’s blazer collar and rather physically pulled his body away from the table. “The only thing you should be concerned about is out meeting.” 

“I am so excited,” he mused. 

This seemed to gain Jinhoo’s attention who swivelled away from his conversation with Y mid-sentence. “What meeting?”  
Kuhn shrugged. “An alum acquired property.”

“No,” Heochan corrected, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet. “An alum won the Eniwetok Atoll islands in a high stakes poker game and now all the engineering and government seniors get to go on a long weekend there as a tribute to the H-bomb.” 

“What kind of people gamble nuke islands?” Seungmin asked. 

“Fun ones,” Heochan winked before Kuhn dragged him across the dining hall, stumbling and grumbling along after him. 

There was a certain amount of humble reality to the boy pulling Heochan away, a gentle and silent power compounded by his now brooding features set into the dark red trim of his navy blazer, like a sharp cut that ran parallel to his jaw. They were all painfully impressive people, as childish and impulsive as they were, because they were raised not to fear any consequences. People like that were dangerous. People like that were fun. 

Seungmin returned his focus to the two fourth years still at the table, quietly bickering about something or other which pertained to both their experimental research, Y’s current love-interest being along the lines of DNA targeted airborne viruses and Jinhoo on a tryst with experimental nerve-gas mutation – or so he had gathered from their jumbled jargon. Jinhoo tapped his pointer and second finger on the table in a rhythmic agitation, the glint of a thick heavy gold ring on his pinkie weighing down his hand upon the table. Y, oblivious to his friend’s growing agitation, swept his arms through the air with a bright smile as he explained… again, something Seungmin could not quite pick up. Yes, the factory was full of Geniuses and they bore the namesake proudly and without reproach. 

“Uh, guys…” Seungmin cut in, waving his hand in the air briefly. 

Y continued his tangent, distracted by his own words, but Jinhoo took notice on the small second year and placed his rambling roommate behind his back to face the younger. “What’s up?”

“I might need help finding some of my classes. I went through like half the campus trying to find the dining hall.” 

This was, of course, how Seungmin found himself in the recesses of the dining hall, passing by a small smoking lounge and being led to the barricaded doors of the school’s spent fuel rod storage, where, of course, there were no longer any spent fuel rods. 

“Well, where are they?” Seungmin asked, his voice cut into the darkened passage, ricocheting off the stone and metal walls. 

“I don’t know,” Y shrugged. “Not here.”

“They moved them out in the late 90s,” Jinhoo answered instead. “Figured we could pawn them off on everybody’s least favourite country.” 

“What’s everybody’s-”

“Do you really have to ask,” Y questioned with a amused exhale. 

“No. I guess not,” Seungmin said and they were moving on. 

“Oh wait!” Y paused at the top of the staircase, pivoting on his feel all of a sudden and raising a hand to point down the stairs at Seungmin. “Don’t go in the tunnels. They will flood at high  
tide.” 

The younger ascended slowly to meet Y at the entrance, stone giving way to dirt giving way to grass. “Why would I go in the tunnels?”  
Jinhoo came up from behind and clapped him on the back. “Lots of reasons.” 

As they rounded the curve of the last academic building, having passed by the engineering hanger entirely on account of personal preferences, Jinhoo and Y flanking either of the first year’s sides with a familial sense of comfort, Seungmin pointed at a large basin and silo structure in the distance, just inside the tall winding fence on the periphery of the cliffs where they met the sparse trees at the campus’s end. 

“What’s that?” 

Jinhoo sighed, deep and knowing, before he responded: “Don’t let the engineers lure you to the uranium enricher.”

The younger seemed surprised. “You have a uranium enricher?” 

“What do you think we buy enriched uranium?” Jinhoo balked. “Are you crazy?”

“The econ kids would never let us be that flippant,” Y tacked on with a shake of his head. “And they can be surprisingly- aggressively- persuasive.” 

“That reminds me,” Jinhoo mused, piggybacking off the other. “Don’t listen to Jangjun.” 

“Who’s Jangjun?” Seungmin asked. 

“Doesn’t matter,” Y inserted. “Don’t listen to him,” he added sternly.


	3. Second Impressions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm just really into the idea of "awkward to misinterpreted agitation to hate to reluctant art crime partners to friends" 
> 
> I feel like that should be a trope

“Um…” a small voice met Tag and Hoyeon’s back as they stood before their work bench, vial raised above what could be described as a modern caldron, a drummed basin of stainless steel and black lines crisscrossing it at sharp angled seams. 

Tag met Hoyeon yesterday, shocking pink hair and a twisted cable of necklaces littering the other’s neck peeking visibly through a scandalously open oxford that no one in the room seemed remotely phased by. Tag had walked into his Bio-Weapons introduction module and spotted the other, perched on a lab table with a certain chaotic zeal about him, long legs folding themselves in odd shapes beneath the counter, and immediately plonked himself down right beside the boy. Hoyeon was funny and remarkably knowledgeable about old Genius lore curtesy of his older brother, almost as knowledgeable as Tag himself which was, on all accounts, a feat. Tag himself kept a widely extensive social network reaching back into the alums and across every discipline… except for econ, the economics department evaded him somehow. But that wasn’t important. Now, now being 9:30 in the morning on a Wednesday, Tag stood adjacent the boy and grappled as to why someone had thrown out a hesitant exclamation of distaste in the middle of their lecture at their uniformed backs. 

Hoyeon paused, wrist bent nearly enough to pour forward the liquid, and threw a quirked eyebrow over his shoulder at the speaker. “Yes?”

“That’s not the right vial,” the girl behind them said. 

Tag studied the sheet in front of them a moment, pouring over the lines and lines of words and structures, and then looked between the vial in Hoyeon’s hand and the slew of others on the worksurface. “It’s not?” he asked, putting the sheet down, confused. 

“No,” she corrected gently. “That’s the diboron tetrafluoride. We’re supposed to be using sulphur tetrafluoride.” 

“Oh,” Hoyeon breathed out, settling the substance back down slowly. “Thanks.” 

“No problem,” she smiled. “Just figured you won’t want to loose your eyebrows on the second day of class is all.” 

Tag narrowed his eyebrows. “You’re… helpful.” 

“Yes,” she simply said. “I am.” 

“Why?” Tag threw at her, perhaps a little more forceful than he intended because it resulted in Hoyeon swatting his new friend’s arm with a gawking swing. 

“Don’t be rude, dude!” 

“I’m not,” Tag defended. “I’m just asking why she’s being so nice.” 

“Maybe some people just are nice.” Hoyeon offered. 

“I really doubt that.” 

“Why?” the girl parroted back with a smile. 

“See!” Tag said. “She’s mocking me!” 

“Am I?” the girl asked again.  
“Yes!” he hissed back at her. 

“Dude,” Hoyeon attempted to calm Tag. “It’s fine. Chill.” 

The teacher was eyeing them now, out of his periphery, where he sat at his desk, filing through what they all assumed where reports and papers by years above them due to red pen sticking out of his mouth, precariously balanced in his teeth. At Tag’s incessant fuming, Hoyeon’s desperate management, and the girl’s distractedly pointed statements, their Professor had apparently had enough, sending a warning glare across the tiled room at the three students. 

“Children! Shut the fuck up or get out of my class.” 

“I didn’t even say anything,” the girl innocently responded, raising her arms in a shrug, the shoulders of her blazer lifting slightly as they rose and the buttons on her shirt pulling taught at the stretch. 

That was it, Tag thought. Enough of this smug girl standing all alone at the workbench behind them- which he could almost guess why she didn’t have a partner now-, enough dismissive remarks centred on intentional cluelessness, and enough of this fucking, boring lecture. 

“Fuck you!” Tag shot back and immediately picked up the vial to dump it directly into their basin. 

And that was how they all found themselves excused from the reminder of the two hour session on tetrafluorides, which one Tag couldn’t recall and if he asked Hoyeon he guaranteed his partner wouldn’t either. Tag uncrossed his legs and folded the other on top with a deep sigh. All three of them were stuffed on a bench in the hallway, thigh to thigh to thigh, in the still and quiet hall outside the door to the lab. Tag’s shirt sleeves were singed around the wrists and faint splatters of an ashen burn scattered his chest as did Hoyeon, who had, unluckily, managed to sear part of the bangs which fell over his face. Yein sat between them, hands folded politely in her lap, a black tinge tainting the pale skin there. 

“Would you say that was your best decision?” Hoyeon 

Tag didn’t respond, choosing to stare at his shoes where they sat squeaking against the wood floor as he swayed them back and forth with crossed ankles extending into the walking space of the hall. 

He turned to the girl after a moment, only a slight swivel, and nodded a reluctant acknowledgment at her. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“My name’s Yein.” 

“Sorry, Yein,” he repeated. 

Hoyeon leaned further into the bench, back sliding down to curve above the junction of the back and the seat of it, legs pushing further than Tag’s across the wood. “Why don’t I get an apology?” he huffed at his partner across the top of the girl Yein’s head. 

Tag released a staccato laugh which lasted only a second. “Did you need one?” 

“Not really,” Hoyeon relented. 

“What are we supposed to do now?” Yein asked them, glancing expectantly between the two, her legs kicking back and forth. 

“I did steal the teacher’s key,” Tag smirked. 

“Key to what?” Yein asked calmly, interested, invested as Hoyeon’s back shot up straight and he leaned across the girl’s lap to face Tag: “How?!” 

“I don’t know,” the boy laughed. “Wanna find out?” 

Yein stopped her legs and sat there a moment between them silent. “Shouldn’t we not be doing that when we were almost handed a detention?”

“Oh, you need to do a lot more to get a detention,” Hoyeon said. 

“Never has it been so brutally honest,” Yein mumbled to herself, “that making the wrong friends is what kills you.” 

Hoyeon nudged her with a big smile. “Are you in, stranger?”

And to be fair, sometimes the wrong friends were exactly what you needed, particularly at the start of a long journey which no doubt ranked high in terms of mortal sin and illustrious toil. So  
Yein said yes. And to steal a page for Hoyeon’s book, it was not the best decision she had ever made. 

“Why would it need limes?” she asked the two boys before her, all of them cross legged on the grass behind one of the dorms they all, coincidentally, shared. 

They had a tarp spread out, laminated and stiff against the earth where a myriad of mason jars sat resting like tiny treasures found upon the surface. There were liquids and oddly shaped masses of ambiguous nature and state, misty fogged vapours clinging to the inside of the glass from fogs and smogs and hazes, and worst of all, one was smelled like limes. 

“Oh no this one is mine,” Tag drawled, picking it up and sipping at the contents. He immediately sputtered and spat it back out. “Not the right one,” he coughed out, hand reaching for another. 

“Do you want me to check?” Hoyeon offered, taking the jar from him. 

“No, It’s fine,” Tag waved the other off, and took the glass back into his own palm. “I’m used to it.” 

Thankfully, it was indeed the right glass and the boy miraculously ended up gulping down the contents without any more damage to his windpipe or lungs or central nervous system, or whatever it was these unknown materials did to one’s body when wrongfully ingested – or ingested at all. Yein and Hoyeon watched as Tag mixed and threw the different substances together on nothing but whim and a hazy remembrance, a haphazard amalgamation of all they had managed to lout to from the storage locker before a suspicious noise caused them to bolt from the thing, spilling a considerable amount onto the floor and stuffing the rest through the top of their backpacks and satchels. 

Abruptly, the concoction misted into a plume of faintly purple air, thick and dense like a rain weighted cloud. The sound garnered the other two’s attention from where they had been chained to their phones, not yet realizing the very specific and spotty service one was limited to on a island in the middle of the ocean without the propensity to erect cell towers. Hoyeon let out a gleeful yop and gave Yein a high-five with so much exuberance that she was tumbling backwards from the force with her own happy laugh and landing flat on her back. 

Tag turned to them with a grin, shining eyes and a certain mischief laying dormant beneath their glaze. As Hoyeon reached over to help the giggling girl up, Tag snatched up another vial with an alarmingly orange label that just screamed interest and impulse and all those good sinful attractions. Yein’s head rolled to the side and too late did she notice what exactly said vial contained, and too late did she manage to right herself in a panicked cold sweat, and too late did she extend a hand forward to stop the boy’s wrist because the next second, Tag was dumping in the entire thing. 

“No! That’s-”

The jar made a fizzling sound followed by a crack and then the thing was steaming and shaking where it sat, only to foam and boil over the sides of the now breaking glass jar. It shot up to the side in a wide, dangerous arch through the air and towards the corner of the dorm before it disappeared out of sight. Hoyeon had ducked down to guard his head in his lap, hands clasped behind his neck in a tense defence. Yein and Tag sat stunned, staring at the direction of their vial had gone. 

Tag opened his mouth to release a relieved snort but before Yein could even slap the sound out of his mouth, they heard a painful yelp and scrambled onto their feet. Hoyeon was only a moment behind them and as the three came careening around the building to find the emitter of the noise, Tag’s guilty conscious finally reared its head. 

Seungmin stood there, bag dropped to the ground beside him at his feet, holding his temple with both hands and glancing about in a confused daze. 

“Oh my god, I am so sorry,” Tag breathed out and his roommate’s gaze shot up to meet his. 

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!” 

“Lime juice…?” 

Seungmin’s glare was the only thing he received in response, a disastrously vexed look which rooted all three of the bio-weapons students to the spot. 

“Sorry?” Tag offered with a sheepish smile. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” 

“Dude, look. I’m sorry, okay?” Tag attempted to calm the boy. “It was just an accident.” 

“ _You’re_ an accident!” Seungmin growled, bending down with a visible wince to pick his bag up and aggressively throw it over his shoulder. 

“Buddy-”

“I am NOT your buddy, Tag,” the other grit out, his jaw tightly wired shut and the words coming out like spit. “So _please_ ,” he stressed, “stop trying to be mine.” And then he stomped through the door, slamming it shut behind him.

Maybe it wasn’t true what they said about first impressions, Tag thought. Maybe all the other ones mattered too.


	4. Creative Destruction

When Seungmin went to bed that night he did so with a vitriolic hate burning inside his head so hot that he barely fell asleep the entire first hour he had crawled beneath the covers. There was something abrasive about your new roommate, who for the record you were randomly lumped together with, turning out to be the bane of your existence and, quite impressively really when you thought about it, in only two days of meeting each other. When he woke up to find the bed across the room from his empty and cold, his anger might have dissipated a little… just a little at the thought that Tag had not wanted to come back. Or perhaps he felt he wasn’t welcome, which, to be fair, he really wasn’t. Seungmin quickly and soundlessly made his bed, swiping his books and papers off his desk and into his bag, grabbed his blazer in one hand and opened the door with the other, a red and blue stiped tie laying untied around his neck. 

A faint bass drum was beating through one of the doors in the hall, a rather hearty punch as it drifted into the otherwise quiet space. As Seungmin let the door swing closed behind him and wrangled his tie into a loose knot, he noticed the body in the corridor, relentlessly pacing on the carpet runner, back and forth beside their door. Tag was mumbling to himself , hands gesturing in the air, in a wrinkled dress shirt and frazzled, unkept hair. The boy stopped when he noticed Seungmin’s shoes standing there in the open doorway and raised his gaze. 

“Hey,” the tall boy waved awkwardly, stepping over. 

“Did you need something?” 

“I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.” 

“Why would you think that?” Seungmin mocked and Tag remained silent. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know,” he added. 

“So I’ve been told,” the boy mused. 

They waited silently for a moment, each expecting the other to talk, before Seungmin decided to let his curiosity get the better of his vexation. “What are you doing anyways?”

Tag scuffed his foot on the edge of the rug, the fringe on the side coming up and flipping over where he touched it. “Trying to ask you to go to breakfast with me.” 

Seungmin raised his eyebrow. “Because?”

“I don’t know,” the other faltered, rolling his eyes to gaze at the ceiling with a slight groan audible in his tone. “Because I feel bad I guess,” he continued, meeting Seungmin’s eyes again. 

“You guess?”

“I do feel bad,” Tag corrected. “Can we talk?”

“About what?”

“About how much of an asshole I am.” 

Seungmin’s lips involuntarily twitched upwards for a brief moment. “Sure. Whatever,” he said waving the other off and moving past him down the corridor to the stairs. 

Tag jogged to catch up, his own bag lightly hitting at his back as it jostled from the tiny hops in his step. 

“Did I say sorry already? Because sorry,” the boy drowned as Seungmin started down the stairs. 

“You did.” 

"And?” Tag insisted. 

“And you already said sorry,” Seungmin simply said, not bothering to glance back at the boy following him. 

“Do I get an acknowledgement?” Tag questioned. “Any forgiveness? A reprieve?” 

“When I feel like it.” 

When they reached the door outside, Tag stopped. “Do you hear that?”

Seungmin sighed, hand on the handle and body nearly ready to just the other behind. “Hear what?”

“That sound,” Tag said. “Do you hear it?”

“If I did, do you think I would have asked you that?” 

“Good point,” the other admitted. “But seriously, I hear something.” 

“I’m sure you do.” 

Tag’s expression change. “I don’t feel like you believe me.” 

“No, I don’t trust you,” Seungmin argued. “It’s completely different.” 

“Well…” the other drawled. “I’m gonna go find it. Fell free to join me if you want.” And he took off with long purposeful strides towards one of the many Victorian carved doors lined on the wall, the last on the left with a bronze knob and a key sticking out of the lock. 

Seungmin stood there tapping his foot against the floor and stared at the door as it closed behind Tag. He waited. And waited. 

“I don’t care,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t.” 

He waited. 

“Oh my god, fine!” he groaned, stomping his foot and he followed through the door after Tag. 

He gingerly stepped onto the stone step, a curving spiral leading down beneath the ground floor of the dorm. There were elaborate sconces every couple of feet following the curve into the depths of the earth. Seungmin heard Tag’s footsteps thundering down, the clack of his dress shoes on the stone, and decided to follow, against any and all better judgement, the terribly annoying boy into the basement of their building. As he rounded the spiral after nearly half a minute, he bumped into a paused Tag who was frozen at the bottom of the staircase, another door held open by his braced forearm. The horrendously loud sound of a classical symphony rang out from a large industrial sized speaker, jarring both of their eras. 

There was a girl covered in paint, blazer tied around her waist, shirt sleeves rolled up and covered in various colors, a streak of blue in her hair and a couple splatters of red and yellow on her face. There a streak of gold too, on her neck, running down beneath the collar of her skirt on her skin in a faint tinge that wasn’t apparent until it caught the light. She was barely seen herself, a crouched figure, in a frenetic state of undress and mess, silhouetted from the light pouring through the open door and hitting the fresh wet mural on the wall. 

“What are you-” Seungmin started to ask. 

The girl’s hand shot up, splayed out in a stopping motion. “Shhh!” she ordered him, right hand delicately filing in the last of a black line swooping across the stone wall against a sea of green, the division itself just a hair’s width requiring her to focus. 

“You’re pretty good,” Tag mused. 

“Of course I am,” she smiled. 

Seungmin adjusted to the light and then finally it clicked. “Is that-” 

“I specialize in propaganda,” she answered him quickly, stepping back with crossed arms to admire her work, flaking rainbow beneath her finger nails and circling her fingers like colorful snakes. 

“I can tell,” Tag said. 

She turned them to see the two boys who had interrupted her mid-work. “Ryu Sujeong,” she smiled. “Second year. Gov. Out of your league.” 

“Was the last part really necessary?” Seungmin asked. 

“Yes. Now hold this,” she said extending the brush she had just been using to him and Seungmin was so caught off guard that he took it. 

“And you,” she said pointing at Tag. “Close the door. The lighting’s bad.” 

“But-”

Sujeong’s head whipped around, and Tag immediately closed his mouth. 

"Why does this look suspiciously like a dungeon?” Seungmin whispered to Tag as they watched her. 

“Because it is,” the other said. “How old did you think the school was?” 

“Not dungeon old.” 

“Well then. I am delighted to be the one to correct you.” 

“Could you quiet down,” Sujeong reprimanded them with a disarmingly friendly smile. “You’re distracting me.” 

“Are we going to be late for breakfast?” Seungmin whispered to Tag again. 

“Probably,” he shrugged. 

“It’s quite pretty,” Tag murmured a second later. 

Seungmin let his eyes trail across the delicate shapes on the wall, the girl’s brush flitting across them with a delicate grace. “Yeah, I guess it is.” 

Tag turned to face the other. “Why do you think she’s painting it in the basement?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“If I was spending all this time working on something,” Tag volunteered, “I’d make damn sure everyone saw it.” 

“Oh, boys,” Sujeong called out, stepping away from the wall once again to study it in its entirety. “I think we’re ready.” 

“Ready for what?” Tag asked. 

She threw off a tarp covering the indistinguishable mass beside her with a flourish and discarded the floating fabric to the floor, letting it skate through the air. 

“Is that gasoline?” Seungmin balked. 

Sujeong quickly uncapped the container and threw a can of it at the wall, watching as it dripping down the mural in trails, holding onto the paint like a sticky lacquer. It flowed in a river down the painting until it eventually ran out about an ich above the floor, a couple drops making their way to the ground beneath but a majority resting in place over her work, splashed above the wet drawing in a layer of smelly coating. And then she bent to pick a long wooden stick from the inside of her knee sock, Seungmin noticing it was a match a bit too late to do anything with that information, and she lit it on fire. 

Both boys were paralyzed, watching as she simply let the orange flames lick away at the wall and her beautiful, sprawling creation. Smoke began to fill the room. Tag coughed into his hands and Seungmin felt his eyes beginning to burn, holding an arm up to block the ashen air from his face. Sujeong, now with a bandanna covering her mouth and nose that neither boy had noticed was around her face until that very moment, calmly waltzed over to a small cut out in the far stone wall, covered with wrought iron bars, and pushed the glass pane behind it down letting the smoke funnel into a pressurized tunnel running next to the room they were in. The smoke was sucked out like a vacuum. As the boys grappled with what exactly Sujeong had been doing in that basement and why it seemed a regular practice to viscerally burn her work when done, a buzzing sound erupted from her pocket. The girl fished a phone out of the bag resting at her feet, completely at ease with the disaster behind her. 

“Kei?” she questioned into it, staring at the fire, painting flaking and melting off the stone surface, colors discarded to the floor. “Yeah, I’m still in Laverna…Yes, in the basement…No I didn’t ruin another shirt,” she added a wink to the two boys as she spoke. “Well, tell Mijoo to sit her impatient ass down and wait! Okay, yeah… yeah, bye.” 

Seungmin and Tag were rooted to the spot, unblinking, the former still holding a dripping black paintbrush in his grasp. 

“I have to go,” Sujeong chirped, grabbing her bag and kicked the tarp into a heap about a foot away. “Clean-up will you?” 

The two first years were left standing in a burning basement that Seungmin had only just learned was a dungeon breathing in the scent of burning paint as the mysterious second year careened onto the staircase and out of sight. 

“So, uh…” Tag thought aloud, finally making eye contact with his roommate. “How you reckon we put out this fire?”


	5. Origins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one
> 
> feel free to correct me on my limited knowledge of soviet art

“No!” Sujeong shot back, throwing down her pen as she, for what felt like the tenth time, explained to Jangjun why she could not, did not want to, and would never fulfill his idiotic request. 

“Come on!” 

A couple students at the table next to them threw glances at the two as they argued. The shelves seemed to vibrate with their not so hushed disagreement as the two second years threw exasperated words across the desk at each other. Jangjun folded his arms over his book and leaned forward so as to place his pleas just above their strewn papers, and held a hand up beside his mouth to direct them towards his friend. 

“You say no every time!” the boy complained. 

“And I mean it every time!” Sujeong whispered back with a seething venom. 

An odd expression passed over Jangjun’s face which had Sujeong rolling her eyes and dropping her jaw at the other. “You are way too old to pout in public.” 

“No, I’m not. See,” he said leaning into her space. “I’m doing it right now.” 

“You are infuriating.” 

“I wouldn’t annoy you so much if you just introduced me to her.” 

“I said no!” she blurted, sending him a glare. 

Someone from the left violently shushed them as soon as the answer left her tongue, a pointed glower accompanied by an indignant huff. Sujeong smiled sheepishly at Sangho and nodded her head in apology which seemed to placate the student before she turned back to Jangjun. 

“Look what you did,” she hissed at him. 

“Me?” he squawked. “You were the one he yelled!” 

“Because you’re driving me crazy!” she argued. 

Jangjun leaned back into his seat, the gentle squeak of old wooden joints accompanying the motion, and folded his arms across his chest with a twitch of his upper lip. “Jin would do it for me!” he smugly added. 

“No, she wouldn’t!” Sujeong straight up yelled into the quiet room. “Jin agrees with me!” 

"How do you know?" he mocked back. 

"Because Jin isn't as stupid as you are!" 

“OKAY, SERIOUSLY!” Sangho shot up from his chair with a clank and a clatter, the chair he was sitting on flying bank and crashing over at the abrupt movement. “SHUT THE FUCK UP! I HAVE A LAB PRACTICAL IN 10 MINUTES!” 

“I’M SORRY!” Sujeong growled back, the whip of her head towards the offending individual causing an aggressive flip of her hair, tied up with an antique emerald pin, cutting through the air in a sharp arch which sent the pin flying out and slamming into Jangjun’s noise. 

“Ow!” the boy screeched earning a glare from both the standing medical student and the girl seated across him. “I didn’t do anything!” he defended holding his hands up in resistance. 

“That’s it! I’m leaving!” Sangho announced passionately and stomped out of the library with an armful of papers. 

“Ugh!” Sujeong groaned and dropped her head onto the desk with a heavy thud as her forehead made impact. “Now I pissed off Sangho,” she grumbled looking up. “It’s not even easy to piss off Sangho.” 

“This wouldn’t have happened if you just-”

Sujeong cut the boy off with a book making contact with his cheek as she heaved it over the desk at his head. 

“Are you serious!” Jangjun chastised when he recovered from the hit. “That was like War and Peace heavy!” 

“It’s the Voynich Manuscript you fucking idiot!” 

"I thought that was at Yale?” he mumbled rubbing his cheekbone. 

“Yeah, the fake one.”

"How am I supposed to know that?" 

"You're right," she nodded thoughtfully. "I shouldn't expect you to know anything." 

He pointed at her in accusation. “You are by far the most uptight government major I have ever met.” 

“Me?!” 

“Yeah, who else do you think it would be?” he questioned. “Yeonkuk??”

“That is so rich coming from you! I mean the Engineering department is in perpetual danger. If I get impulsive people start berating their government, but if one of you do Guam’s gone!” 

“Hey! I don’t have anything against Guam!” Jangjun yelled back. “Why would I blow up Guam?” 

“GET OUT OF THE GODDAMN LIBRARY!” another kid screamed and they were rushing out before they even clocked who said it that time. 

“I can’t believe you got me kicked out of the library again!” 

“Hey, it takes two to tango,” Jangjun mocked back. “Plus, you’ve been yelling a lot.” 

“And that’s exactly why!” 

He shrugged. “I just think you’re impatient.” 

“Oh my god, there’s something wrong with you.” 

“Tag! Hey, I see you!” Jangjun’s eyes locked on something behind Sujeong down the hallway. “Don’t you dare hide from me! Get over here!” 

The boy stepped out from behind his friend’s back and shuffled over hesitantly only to be trapped beneath Jangjun’s muscles arm thrown over his shoulders. “Tag, tell Sujeong I deserve to date Nayoung,” the older ordered. 

Tag glanced between the two. “Im or Kim?” he asked. 

Jangjun groaned. “Just tell her.” 

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Just do it!” 

Tag did not look as if he was ready to respond any time soon and was fidgeting restlessly beneath the elder’s arm. 

“You! The kid from the basement!” Sujeong suddenly called out at a passing Seungmin. She grabbed the boy’s shoulders, forcefully swiveling him around to face their conversation. “Tell Jangjun he’s an idiot!” 

“Who are you?” he reeled back and then paused. “Wait. Jangjun?” Seungmin stopped. “I was warned about you.” 

“As you should be!” Sujeong agreed, her grip tightening on his one shoulder and dropping her other hand. 

“Who was it?” Jangjun stepped forward into Seungmin’s face. “Was it Mijoo?” he asked. “It was Mijoo, wasn’t it? Don’t trust her. She’s a snake.”

“Stop! Badmouthing! Your! Sister!” Sujeong chided him, releasing the first year so she could slap Jangjun’s arm with every word. 

“Hey, stop hitting me in front of Tag!” the engineer gripped. “He still thinks I’m cool.” 

“No, I don’t,” Tag quickly responded. 

Jangjun turned to him with an offended gasp, balking with a dropped jaw and all. “How could you?” 

“If it makes you feel better,” Seungmin offered from beside Sujeong, “I never thought you were cool.” 

Sujeong burst out laughing and clapped him on the back as Jangjun’s expression somehow got more offended than before. 

“Kids these days,” the second year murmured. “I don’t even know you!” 

Tag flinched at his friend’s sudden raised tone. “Hey, don’t yell at my roommate.” 

“Oh? So you’re being nice to me now?” Seungmin shot at him. 

“What can I do to make it up to you?”

Seungmin scoffed. "Not be a jerk," he offered. 

"How can I-"

“You two are roommates?” Sujeong question cut Tag off mid-thought. 

Jangjun narrowed his eyes. “How do you know them?”

“They found me in Laverna,” she answered nonchalantly. 

“Yeah,” Tag added. “She set a Shemiakin-esque mural on fire.” 

“Oh,” she smiled happily. “You know Soviet nonconformist art?”

“I thought it was more Moscow Conceptualist but whatever,” Seungmin mumbled. 

“Oh yeah!” Tag exclaimed. “Like a Pivovarov influence!” 

“Why’d you burn it though?” Seungmin asked Sujeong, a genuine sense of interest in his tone. 

“I get bored,” she said. “And I like fire.” 

“You should totally show people. I mean I would love something like that in my room,” Tag told her. 

“Wish we could just tack up a couple impressionists,” Seungmin casually threw out. 

“What are you gonna do rob a museum?” Jangjun joked with a light laugh. 

Sujeong made silent eye-contact first with Seungmin and then glanced at Tag who bore the same expression. 

“No,” Jangjun breathed out. “You can’t be serious. That was a joke.” 

“I mean…” Sujeong mused. 

“You’re not clandestine?” he accused her. “What’s the fucking point?”

“Aesthetic,” Tag and Sujeong answered simultaneously and then both looked at Seungmin. 

The boy shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “Aesthetic," and was met with both their smiling faces.


	6. HESIT I: Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo, Egypt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My first attempt at a heist scene

The October chill drifted in on the backs of red and amber leaves, brown intermixed in the flurry of fall, setting a frenetic backdrop in the wake of three young students. It was Fall Long Weekend at the Factory and most the student body had zipped up their getaway bags, leather and needlepoint and canvas, and hopped on the school’s zodiacs and assorted speed boats to start their jaunts at the various corners of the earth in resorts and third homes and 5 star hotels. But Tag, Seungmin, and Sujeong did not decide their destination based on relaxation or entertainment. They weren’t seeking sun or joyous distraction. They were looking for poppy flowers. Vincent’s Poppy Flowers to be exact. 

And while others were most certainly sipping wine in a vineyard cozied up to a bonfire or lounging in the sun-baked sands of Tahiti, Seungmin was scrambling up the highest wall he had ever climbed in his life, rope sure and steady beneath his gloved covered hands and feet firmly planted on the flat surface. 

“Why are you so fast?!” Sujeong’s voice drifted up from the ground. 

“I like rock climbing!” 

“Yeah,” she shouted back. “But this isn’t a mountain! It’s a museum in Cairo for fuck’s sake!” 

“Stop yelling!” Tag yelled at them. 

“Make me!” Seungmin laughed out and scaled to the top of the bulwark where he secured the grappling hook and stuck his tongue down at the two remaining at the bottom, before hopping over the side into the greenery. 

Sujeong was certain that no one had ever been fuelled by such pure spite before that it resulted in them racing up 40 feet into the air. 

The entrance to the Mahmoud-Khalil-Museum was like an one of the old estate homes littering Nice such as the tightly kept secret of the charming Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice, columns and windows and grounds curtesy of the whims of Russian Princess Elizaveta Vasilievna Kochubey. But the Khalil was a palace of greater grandeur. The towering white feat of architecture erupted like a beacon of culture from green, green grounds all perfectly manicured around the paths leading to its doors. It was tucked behind the tall walls of an outer bastion, a secret garden and a secret pleasure hidden behind the stone. And, Tag would want to add, the stars looked awfully beautiful from the courtyard at 1 o’ clock in the morning. 

Tag stopped as they crept up the stone paved path and careened his neck to stare at the stars. “I think I see Camelopardalis,” he mused. 

Seungmin paused too, and stood beside the boy. “What now?”

“Camelopardalis.”

“Saying it a second time doesn’t help if I didn't know what you were talking about the first time.” 

“Hey!”

“I thought you two were doing better,” Sujeong huffed. 

“We are!” they both yelled back. 

The girl merely shook her hand and continued down the tiles to the Khalil and the to Van Gogh they had set their sights on a month prior. The windows were surprisingly easy to open, the security system devastatingly simple to crack even for Seungmin who focused 90% of his efforts on the Genius economics program , and the whole job just seemed suspiciously amateur to accomplish. Sure Sujeong had gotten her foot stuck in the railing of the balcony as the boys hoisted her up and sure she had then proceeded to curse them out for five minutes on their ability to lift an entire person in the air above their heads as they stood there scrambling to quiet her in the night, Tag slightly more amused and Seungmin slightly more terrified. But it was easy all things considered. 

“It’s like they want us to steal it,” Tag said, ascending the staircase. 

“No one wants you to steal anything,” Seungmin threw down at him from the landing. 

“If they didn’t want us to steal it,” Sujeong inserted, popping her head right next to Seungmin’s and gazing down at tag, “then they should do a better job of stopping it from being stolen the first time.”

Seungmin turned to her confused. “Someone already took it?” 

“Yeah, in 1978. I told you before we took the car over here.” 

“Tag was distracting me.”

“Me?” the boy queried as he made his way over to them. “What did I do?”

“Your music was too loud.”

“Too loud? Too loud?!” he contended. “When you study, you don’t even wear headphone!” 

“I would if I actually liked you.” 

The wind blew past the museum and howled against the window panes, causing them to rattle faintly and Seungmin jumped at the sound. He then ran his hands down his face, pushing at the skin in frustration as Tag snickered from behind him. 

“Someone might think you’re not cut out for this,” Tag teased. 

Seungmin’s face grew into a deep set frown as he looked at the boy. “Someone might think you suck.” 

Tag tisked at the other. “Not your best comeback.” 

“Hello!” Sujeong called out from around the corner. “We have a painting to steal!” 

They processed through the halls of portraits and still lives and landscapes almost reverently, gifting each work a thoughtful glance as they moved through the museum. 

“You know,” Seungmin thought aloud. “I think I like it better like this.” 

Tag granted him a look in his peripheral vision. “At night when we can barely see anything?”

“No. Empty. Quiet.” 

“They’re supposed to be quiet.” 

Seungmin watched as Sujeong bounded up the Poppy Flowers finally having found them after ten minutes of wandering about, now bothering to pick up one the many museum guides sitting in the rotary at the help desk. “Okay then just fuck me I guess,” he said. 

“Not in the museum!” Tag gasped. “I would never!” 

Sujeong held her breathe as she paused, delicate hand extended in the dark room, the glint of a flashlight off the knife she held shining in the space like a beacon. The sharpened point suspended aloft in the air, right above the tip of a poppy, as if the blade was kissing the oil centimetres beneath its biting metallic lip. 

“This seems cliché,” she sighed, knuckles around the knife hilt loosening, arm bent into the air parallel the frame but falling ever so slightly. She turned back to the two confusedly stunned boys, masks pulled down to their throats like thick woollen chockers. “Does this seem cliché to you?” she asked. 

“We’re stealing a literal masterpiece, in what way is this cliché?” Seungmin whisper yelled above the beaming light from his torch. 

“No, no,” Tag drawled, leaning to the side and resting a leisurely elbow on Seungmin’s shoulder. “She has a point.” 

Sujeong huffed and dropped her arm. “Right? Like the first one had to be a Van Gogh.” She paused and a look of realization passed over her features accompanied by a despondent pout. “Are we unoriginal?” 

“Honey,” Tag assured her. “I’ve never been unoriginal a day in my life. And should it happen, I give you full permission to gut my fucking stomach like a slaughtered lamb.”

“If we were unoriginal it would have been a Monet,” Seungmin added, shoving Tag from his shoulder. 

The shorter boy waltzed forward with conviction, grabbing the blade from Sujeong’s hand and slamming the knife through the corner of the painting in the upper right hand corner near the frame. 

“There,” he mumbled. “Now I’m the cliché one.” 

Sujeong grumbled quietly. 

“What was that?” Tag asked.

“He could have been nicer about it,” she pouted and then laid her head on his shoulder. 

“I know, sweetie. I know.”

“Well, I came here in the first place because you said you wanted the Van Gogh,” Seungmin said and when Sujeong refused to look up from Tag’s collarbone, he sighed. “I’m sorry. Would you like to cut the rest of the painting out?” 

“Yay!” she clapped and threw herself toward the flowers, grabbing the knife from Seungmin’s hand. 

The second year then proceeded to cut the flowers from the wall in tiny swipes of the blade until it was removed, rolled, and tied tight with a creme Chanel ribbon taken from her hair. Seungmin rolled his eyes but let her hack delicately around the frame with a small smile rising up on his face, against all his efforts to stop it. Sujeong did that now-a-days. She made the two roommates endure each other with a wink and a grin, the occasional biting remark to placate their arguments and, ever so often, she had even slapped the words right out of Tag’s mouth. It was a habit, they were leaning. Today, there were 8 days strong, Seungmin thought he recalled. Maybe, they should get a blackboard to keep track. 

“Is that a Gaugin?” Sujeong asked as she passed a particular canvas, full knowing that yes it was but the words tumbling out like one of those loose lipped sort of realization one mumbled to themselves. 

“They have plaques,” Seungmin reminded her as he came to a stop in front of the large frame. “You could just, I don’t know, read it?” 

“Har, har,” she responded with a tick tock of her head. 

“I don’t really like Gaugin,” Tag said then, studying the work. 

“He was a perv,” Sujeong announced as she stomped her foot at the bottom of the colorful canvas. “Let’s burn everything he ever painted.”

“What about Rodin??” Seungmin balked, picking up a statue set next to it. “Do you have no empathy for Camille Claudel? I know I made you watch that movie!”

“But it’s so pretty!” she whined. 

“Sujeong!” Tag shot at her. 

“The movie!” Seungmin parroted. 

“Okay fine,” she acquiesced. “Smash it,” she added reluctantly with a small wave of her hand. 

“I didn’t say we had to-” Seungmin started before Tag swept an arm out and the stone was flying off the pedestal and smashing to the tile beneath. 

The decibel sensors immediately sounded in a resounding roar and red lights erupted from the ceiling, spinning in a flashy circle. The sound was enough to practically deafen all three of them, a ringing similar to the aftermath of a bomb’s blow tormenting their eardrums. 

“Tag!” Seungmin grit out, clutching his hands over his ears. “The fucking noise!” 

Said boy was turning this way and that with a surprised expression and then met Seungmin’s eyes. “You also didn’t know that would happen!” 

“Yeah but I didn’t do it! You did!” 

“I want justice for Camille!” 

“Camille isn’t part of this right now! Don’t drag her into it!” 

“THE FUCKING ALARM?!” Sujeong bellowed at them. 

“We’re having a conversation!” Seungmin halted her with a ferocious voice. 

“No, you’re not!” she yelled back. “You’re robbing a museum. We’re robbing a museum,” she corrected. “And if you two don’t buckle up and put on your big boy pants, then we’re going to get caught!” 

“She has a point,” Tag repeated the words from earlier.

Seungmin reeled back and kicked him in the shin with all the force in his body, which despite the other’s best attempts at digs and jabs about his height, held an amazing amount of power. Tag doubled over with a yelp, clutching his now bruised leg. 

Sujeong soundlessly raised her eyebrow at the scene. “You done?” 

“Yeah, I’m good now. Let’s go.” 

“But Jeong,” Tag whined, ready to flop bonelessly to the floor in a tantrum. “My leg hurts.” 

“Too bad. We’re leaving.” 

If any of them had wondered, yes it was considerably more difficult to scale a wall with a priceless and frail painting in one hand (which could have been helped if any of them had remembered to pick up the poster tube they purchased for this exact reason from the hotel floor), a despondent and limping Tag (whose willpower for dramatics seemed to be outweighing any sense of self-preservation), and a pissed off Seungmin (who was, probably more often than not, angry at just the sight of Tag). But, ever the growing professionals they were, they made it. 

Once they had settled back into their private car, Tag at the wheel pulling out of an alley at lightning speed and Sujeong and Seungmin thrown over each other in their haphazard effort to vault their bodies into the vehicle, the girl started to giggle. It was a light sound at first which quickly divulged into a tear streak, full bellied, and pure joyful laugh. She rolled off the shorter boy and he soon joined in, a coursing carefree happiness taking over his heart. His eyes met Tag’s smiling face in the rear-view mirror and for once, he didn’t feel like punching his roommate in the face.


	7. Gripes and Grumbles and a Whole Lot of Nonsense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haven't posted in a hot sec but now I have a whole 2 week quarantine cause I go to school over the pond so yay

“You know, okay I really do relate to Gaugin in the whole escapism by literally escaping thing,” Seungmin mused looking up from scattered financial reports about bust C.D.O.s and the American mortgage fraud scheme which caused the world to collapse in 2008, which, all in all, was some base level research for the Factory to be asking their freshman to complete, insulting really when one thought about and oh had Seungmin thought about it. 

“I’m sorry, what now?” Yuvin’s dangerously innocent gaze met his across all the boring charts and the mindless scrawling and the brightly colour coordinated graphs: so. many. graphs.

“Quite effective,” Seungmin answered him. “10/10, run away from all your problems.” 

Yuvin’s nose crinkled as he proceed the other’s words. “I don’t think that’s how life works,” he said after a second. 

“The problem is…” Seungmin began but the rest of the words were lost to the resulting touch of coffee to his lips as he took a prolonged gulp out of deep pewter tumbler which had been sat steaming next to his work untouched for the better part of the 20 minutes they themselves has been sat at the desks. “The problem is,” he continued, “that I can’t escape anymore. I mean sure there’s breaks and weekends and things, but I used to hop on a train at the slightest indication of any problem and jet off to fucking London. Does this god forsaken island look like London to you?” 

Yuvin stared back at the other boy, slightly confused, slightly intimidated. “I don’t know how you want me to answer that?” 

“Well does it??”

“I don’t want to get the question wrong,” the other first year admitted. 

“Fun fact,” Seungmin offered with a flourish of the blue pen he had wedged between his index and middle fingers. “I absolutely do not get the same emotional release from flinging myself into the sea as I thought I would.” 

Yuvin seemed to open his mouth in a prompt response and then he quickly shut his mouth again. It was almost a full 10 second before the boy had finally settled on the words he spoke next. 

“Is that safe?” he asked the shorter boy seated before him, perhaps appearing smaller from his own towering frame or perhaps because of the recent realization that he was, in all likelihood based on their current conversation, not okay. 

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

“Are you okay?” he asked again. 

“What part of any of what I just said would allow you, in your right mind, to accuse me of being okay?” Seungmin deadpanned. 

“I mean wasn’t your roommate the problem?” Yuvin prompted. “Tack?”

“It’s Tag.”

“You switched rooms didn’t you,” the first year didn’t stop to address the correction. “Swapped with Villain?”

Seungmin loudly groaned and slammed his hand down on the wood causing Yuvin to jolt in his seat. “Do not call him that!” Seungmin chided. “It only inflates his disastrously inflated ego. He’s like the fucking Hindenburg.”

“But I don’t even what his actual name is,” the other defended. “And everyone calls him Villain.”

“Noooo,” Seungmin elongated in agitation, the o’s rolling off his tongue in a viciously sharp cycle of disagreement. “They don’t. He just tells people they do.” 

“Then what’s his real name?”

“It’s uh- shit! Give me a second.” 

Yuvin leaned back in his chair with the threat of a smirk gracing his lips. “You don’t even know?” he taunted, muscles in his face itching to erupt into a dimpled expression of victory. 

“Se… Suu…” Seungmin scrambled. 

“Nah,” Yuvin shook his head. “That doesn’t seem right.” 

“No, it is,” the other insisted. “Trust me.” 

“Trust you? You don’t even know your new roommate’s name!” 

“Seung! It definitely starts with Seung!” Seungmin yelled back. 

Before Yuvin could goad the other with another retort, two of their economics seniors walked into the study space, well, they were juniors but Genius had a strict inner-departmental hierarchy. The fake door, a trompe l’oeil of wood and a chair rail-baseboard, swung flatly shut behind them. 

“You talking about Seungyoun?” Sejun shot out as they waltzed over to the freshman, swinging bags at their feet, and plopping into the empty chairs with the casual nonchalance someone earned for having lived, _survived_ , more than two years at the Factory. 

“Who the fuck is Seungyoun?” Yuvin promptly blurted. 

“Seunghyun!” Seungmin yelled out. “Ha!” he laughed into Yuvin’s stunned face with a jesting finger to boot. “His name is Seunghyun!” 

“Who the hell is Seunghyun?” Sejun mimicked Yuvin’s earlier tone of affronted puzzlement. 

“Seungmin’s new roommate,” Yuvin answered. 

“Why does Seungmin have a new roommate?” their other more friendly and less… chaotic economics third year Sebin asked, his gaze latched to said boy although the question still seemed directed at the first year across from him. 

“I don’t know,” Yuvin shrugged. “Tack’s an asshole.” 

Seungmin sighed. “His name is Tag!” 

“Why do you keep correcting me?” Yuvin threw back. “Why do you care if I say your roommate’s name wrong?” 

“My ex-roommate!” 

“He has a point,” Sejun murmured. 

“Thank you!” Seungmin exclaimed. 

“I meant Yuvin.” 

“Anyways,” Sebin cut into the tense air. “What did _Tag_ do?” he inquired, overly enunciating the name. 

“He’s an asshole!” Seungmin automatically responded, the words having been habitually written into his throat at this point. 

“Yes…” Sejun drawled. “But what did the asshole _do_?” 

“He’s a prospective bio-chem major,” Seungmin began. “So that means he’s smart, right?” the rhetorical question came out and all three boys were nodding their unspoken affirmation to him.

“And it means he’s batshit crazy,” he added, receiving yet more natural, lazy nods. 

“And he’s probably poisoned at least three people,” Seungmin continued, the two juniors heads letting their heads bob up and down as Yuvin’s neck staunchly remained still. 

Yuvin looked to the others in alarm but was gifted nothing more than an empathetic pity glance from Sebin and a dismissive wave which said ‘I’ll tell you later if I remember’ from Sejun. 

“And like honestly,” Seungmin melodramatic stressed the last word in a breathy gripe. “The last thing I want to be doing is picking a fight with a fucking bio-chemistry major. I don’t have a death wish.” 

“So you’re flinging yourself into the ocean for another reason, Edna?” Yuvin scoffed. 

“I already told you it was for the supposed emotional release, dumbass.” 

“Hey,” Sejun stopped him. “Don’t talk to econ kids like that. We reserve that kind of talk for government.” 

“Anyways,” Seungmin continued. “I didn’t intend to start a fight, but who comes through the window at 3 am. Like use the door at least, right?” 

“He could have lost his key,” Sebin said. 

“He didn’t,” Seungmin snipped back. “He did it for fun. So he said. But that wasn’t the worst part. He fell out of the window sill because he’s clumsy as shit, all long legs and gangly arms and… you know the type, real El Greco looking dude. Well, he fell onto the floor with a loud crash. Which like fine, okay. I get that. Maybe. I maybe get that but-”

“Seungmin!” Sejun screamed at him. “Finish the goddamn story!” 

“HE HAD A FUCKING FLARE IN HIS JACKET AND IT SINGED MY ARM!” Seungmin yelled back, yanking his shirt sleeve up to show a ragged, blistered third degree burn. 

“How the hell?” Sebin whispered in awe. 

“It was ‘apparently’,” he mocked with air quotes Tag’s old words which he very obviously didn’t believe, “a faulty flare that didn’t light when he tried earlier and was sure he ‘put out’ before coming back to the room.”

“Dude!” Sejun barked out. 

“Am I allowed to call him an asshole now?” Seungmin asked. 

“I mean-” Sebin started to argue before Seungmin sent him a death glare. “Hey! Let me finish!” the boy chastised him. “It seems like an accident okay? Things happen. People have lit flares. It’s all normal.” 

Yuvin nudged Sejun where the elder sat next to him with his elbow propped on the table upon which he rested his chest. “That’s normal?” he asked the junior. 

“Yeah. One time Byun burned a whole in my floor.” 

“Oh, is he in bio-chem too?”

The laugh which rocketed out of Sejun’s mouth was enough to startle a grown Marine. “Byun?! He’s an econ student.”

“Then how did-”

“ALL I’M SAYING IS,” Seungmin’s awfully loud defense cut the first year off. “THAT TAG JUST KEEPS BEING AN ASSHOLE!”

Sebin just looked onward with down-turned lips and an exhausted moral ground. 

“Look,” Seungmin quieted down. “If it was the first time, maybe. If it was the second, maybe. But this is like the tenth time,” he explained. “I just couldn’t handle the stress anymore.” 

“We’ve all been there,” Sebin calmly coaxed. “We’ve all had a bad roommate.” 

“Hey, wait!” a suddenly invested Sejun interrupted them. “We’ve been rooming together since first year!” 

Sebin’s eyebrow raised subtly. “And?” 

“Fuck you!” 

“Hey,” Yuvin said placing a hand on the elder’s arm. “I thought we saved that kind of talk for the government kids. 

“My god,” Sejun breathed out as they made eye contact. “I’ve raised a monster.” 

“You? Please. Kookheon raised me.” 

“ANOTHER BIO-CHEM!” Seungmin shouted, pointing accusingly at Yuvin. "THEY CAN'T BE TRUSTED!" 

“Oh my god, stop,” Yuvin groaned. 

“Students with departmental vendettas for three times as likely not to make it through the factory.” 

Seungmin whipped his head around to the junior sharing his side of the table. “And by not make it through you mean…?”

Sebin soundlessly mimed a knife being drawn across his throat and then theatrically lolled a limp head to the side, letting his eyes roll to the top and his tongue fall out of his open mouth. 

“Three times?” Seungmin prompted Sejun for clarification. 

“Three times,” the junior answered. 

“Fuck,” he breathed under his breathe. 

“Those odds aren’t that bad,” Yuvin volunteered. “I heard people that just study engineering are like five times more likely to ingest arsenic than professional microchip makers.” 

“That is, by fare, the weirdest fucking stat I have ever heard,” Sejun muttered. “How the hell did someone come up with that?” 

“Hold on,” Sebin added. “Is this assuming that amateur microchip manufacturers aren’t included? Do they ingest more arsenic?” 

“They are amateurs,” Sejun reasoned. 

“Also wait, who the heck told you that?” Seungmin asked the other first year. 

“Kookheon.” 

“DON'T LISTEN TO HIM!” Seungmin’s voice boomed out in the economics study area. 

“OH! MY! GOD!” Yuvin threw back. “Get over it, bud! You’ve been wrong! Build a bridge and get over it!” 

The look in Seungmin’s eyes changed from a slightly vexed wash to a seething glare and, despite Sebin’s best efforts to hold the small boy back and Sejun’s in-no-way-helpful laughter, Yuvin grabbed his papers and bolted from the table, nearly slamming his shin into a wayward coffee table and jumping over the corner in an awkward little hop. 

Despite what people may say about Seungmin, have said about Seungmin, the boy was ruthless. He looked like sunshine had kissed his cheeks and his hair always curled that little bit hair on boys who had been loved by sunshine curled in the morning. Seungmin loved beautiful things such as art, like most people, and knew quite an extensive lot about them, unlike most people. He sometimes sang song little whispers of a song that got stuck in his head when he was met with a silent room for too long or the itches of an econ problem nagging at his brain. But, all in all, sunshine and beauty and song, Seungmin was pretty fucking ruthless. 

“Wait,” Yuvin paused at the open entry into the passage on his escape, extended leg holding open the hinged wall he had moments before elbowed open with a heavy push of his person. “I have a question!” he called out. 

Sebin and Sejun and Seungmin all looked at him, waiting. He relished in the concerned, confused, and scathing expressions he received for a second. 

“Who’s El Greco?”

“Swine!” Seungmin yelled, lobbing his book bag through the air at the other, the contents falling to the floor and spilling across the carpet as the target dashed down the darkened hall in retreat and the chair rail become a steady unbroken line once again. 


	8. Under Pressure

“I think I’m in love with Rafael Soto.” 

Sujeong bristled slightly, looking about the government copy room, small kitchenet to her left with a locked window and seating arrangement behind the desk she sat at in front of the closed door. “How did you get in here?” 

“Rafael Soto,” Tag said again, sliding onto the table with a bored expression, his body perched a hair’s length away from her laptop. “I’m in love with him.”

“The Equestrienne?” she asked. 

“Come on, Jeong,” he lamented. “The kinetic guy,” he corrected her, offended. 

“Oh, the sculptor!”

“The Venezuelan sculptor! Honestly,” Tag continued, leaning further and further toward the surface of the table, Sujeong moving her computer out of the way as his body leisurely came to rest across the wood in a dramatic reline. “I don’t like Spanish boys ever since their Baroque still lives.” 

Sujeong pushed her chair back from the table with a tiny push of her foot, the chunky heel of her black boots scuffing against the floor. “You sound personally affronted,” she remarked, crossing her arms. 

“They completely missed the point! It was about the ephemerality of man! They fell prey to representative materialism like dogs,” Tag ranted. “Like dogs I tell you!”

“Chill it, Golden Age boy.” 

“I’m no boy,” Tag grumbled. 

“Child then,” she smirked. “Golden child.

Tag sat up on the desk, legs curled around the edge of the desk where they hung, and quietly raised a hand up to hold it in front of his heart. “You wound me.”

“He hates you; you know,” she added after a second. 

Tag didn’t need her to elaborate, already well sure of who she was talking about. “Thanks, Jeong.” 

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret.” 

“I won’t.” 

“I’m serious,” she insisted, sternly than she normally was. “We need him for Palermo.”

“God, I know, okay!” he whined, swinging his legs back and forth. “I don’t mean to do it. It just… happens?”

She smiled softly in encouragement. “I know.” 

“I’m just…” he grappled. “I’m just really good at making mistakes sometimes.” 

“Aren’t we all?” she laughed. 

“Yeah but, there’s usually no consequences and I don’t think I like consequences.” 

Sujeong softened for a second, peaking at the boy through her eyelashes, head curved down to the computer in her lap. She watched as he chewed his lip, the bite a nervous little tick she had caught him doing more than once. 

“And I don’t like it when you distract me,” she teased back. 

“I could go to someone else.”

“That’s not a threat?” she grappled with the other’s statement. “I literally want you to.” 

“Well, jokes on you,” he singsonged back, “because I don’t know if I can leave.”

“You… wait, what? What do you mean you can’t leave?” she asked. “How did you even get in here in the first place?” 

“I snuck in.” 

Had Sujeong been anything less than the illustrious second year government student everyone knew her to be, with a dangerously remarkable affinity for propaganda and mass persuasion of agendas, she might have believed him. And had Tag been anything more than the recklessly impulsive and quite often misunderstood loose cannon that graced the bio-chem and medical first year introductory courses, she might have believed him. However, Sujeong was smarter than that and Tag was a prime candidate for lying about whatever hairy situation he found himself in, so she did what the occasion called for. She donned the most unimpressed, irked, unbelieving face she could and kept her mouth shut. 

“Okay,” Tag gave in after a matter of seconds. “Maybe, I pissed off Mijoo because Jangjun is an idiot but he’s a really fucking persuasive idiot,” he added the last part with narrowed eyes. “And then she and Jin kind of, might have, possibly stuffed him in the clandestine equipment locker and me in the closet.” 

“What closet?”

He nodded toward the hallway. 

“Oh,” she murmured before the realization hit her. “Oh! You mean the shredding cupboard!” 

Tag lifted his blazer and a flurry of tiny paper confetti fell out from the space between his shirt and jacket, fluttering down and littering the desk and the floor, a couple pieces flying down onto his lap. 

“You guys have a lot of paper waste,” he noted. “What’s your carbon footprint like?” 

“Nowhere near the engineering department,” she automatically responded. “Wait, don’t distract me. That’s not important,” she adamantly shook her head. “What did you do to Mijoo?” 

“Nothing you should concern yourself with,” Tag waved her off. 

“I could ask Jin? I’m supposed to proof read her research later ”

“Jin and Yunsung are on a French streak,” Tag shot back. 

“Ugh, I forgot about that!” she grumbled, dropping her face into her hands. “I can’t take it anymore. It’s all half-garbled garbage, beautiful unintelligible garbage.”

“You could just, I don’t know,” Tag shrugged, “learn French?” 

Sujeong sent him a writhing look. “Like I’m going to waste time learning another language just to understand an overly caffeinated giant and the awkward debutante. I’m already wasting all my time with you!” 

Tag leaned forward, hands on either side of his thighs, gripping the edge of the table and suspended his body toward her chair. “What’s that supposed to me?”

“Do you know how hard it is planning an art heist?” 

“No.”

“That’s because I do everything!” 

“And I love and appreciate you for that. Have I ever told you how much I love and appreciate-”

Sujeong’s hand went up to cut the boy off. “Don’t sweet talk me. I don’t like it. The insincerity makes me,” she trailed off and visibly shivered. 

“The what can I do show my favorite…” Tag’s eyes widened in fear as she caught on the last word and tore him apart with her eyes. “my only government friend whose company I enjoy considerably more than most other people on this campus,” he amended and continued at her nod of approval, “What can I do to thank you?” 

“I don’t know,” she thought aloud. “Shut up?” 

Tag gave her a mock salute and hopped off the desk, nudging the girl’s chair back in towards the table. “Well,” he huffed. “I’m off.” 

He started toward the door and then halted in his tracks as it swung open, Jin’s smiling face morphing into an angry confusion. The third year calmly turned to Sujeong with a raised eyebrow. 

“Why is he out of the closet?” 

“I didn’t do it!” Sujeong quickly said, throwing her arms into the air. 

“Tag,” Jin breathed out in warning, turning back to the boy. 

He looked between the two girls’ faces, little indication to his thoughts in that moment, and then abruptly bolted, brushing past Jin so quickly she didn’t have the time to trip him. 

“Get back here!” Jin yelled out, hot on his heels, barreling down the stairs after the rogue first year. 

“Tag!” she screamed, earning concerned glances from students milling in the corridor and a delirious smile Tag threw over his shoulder as he sprinted away from her. 

They made it through the door and out into the slightly chilled air: Tag nudging people out of his way, weaving them through like a serpent, and Sujeong pushing, what might perhaps be better described as brutally shoving, people from her path in pursuit. A girl teetered over on the stone after a particularly hard elbow from Jin and fell into the hedge lining the path, her skirt flying up and hair flinging out as she was swallowed into the rough foliage, left behind as Jin’s feet thundered after Tag. 

Tag chanced a glance back again as the girl’s yelp echoed out and laughed at the poor mess of legs tangled in the bush. His eyes fell over to Jin’s seething face and he quickly whipping his head around to the front and, if possible, running even faster than before. 

“Tag! Stop!” Jin called out between huffs as they ran into the curved underpass that ran though the columns suspending the clan-gov bridge above the Factory’s heart housed in the tri-departmental quad. 

“Why would I listen to you?!” he shouted back, throwing it out over his shoulder, eyes trailing, gradually pulling, sideways. 

As he erupted from the end of the underpass, a figure stepped into his line of travel from behind the column’s blind spot. His body slammed right into the kid, sending them both flying in opposites directions and onto the hard stone. A flutter of papers rocketed into the air and arranging themselves in a haphazardly strewn library upon the grass and their bodies. 

“What the hell!” the students called out from the ground, groaning and writhing, a couple sheets rumpling as their body rolled over. 

Tag blinked back a hazy array of lights, his head swimming from the abrupt impact of his skull on the pathway and once again, for the second time that day, covered in paper. 

“That hurt like a BITCH!” the kid spat out again. 

“Sorry,” Tag waved at them, standing on shaky legs, wobbling to the side with a dizzy stumble. “I gotta go,” he muttered, staring up his retreat again. 

“Hey,” the faceless student’s protest fell on deaf ears, well, ringing ears, as Tag noticed Jin catching up to him. 

“FUCKING SLOW DOWN!” Jin’s gritty yell followed him as he ran. 

Someone shouted his name from one of the government windows and he was sure it sounded like Sujeong but then again, his mind was definitely not in its best shape, an aching pinch needling its way into his brain and his vision blurring over until he saw the vague shapes of the buildings surrounding him and the blobs of trees and benches. 

Jin was about to catch him - so, so close - and his stride had begun to falter. Death was approaching on top of a pair of shining black Gucci heels, tall enough to make Jin feel like she could intimidate people and short enough to earn nothing more than a disapproving frown from any uniform checker. And thank the lord they didn’t ever stop her concerning her choice of footwear because he registered a distant snap, a surprised screech, and then saw, in all its god-gilded glory, Jin’s body careening into a group of boys seated on the grass.

Y and Jinhoo erupted into laughter as she sprawled across her laps, Sangho open mouthed and stunned staring at the three of them, jumbled together. Jin groaned a viscerally aggravated deep-chested noise and rolled off the boys, punching her hand into the earth as Tag disappeared from her sight. 

“Fuck!” Jin yelled. “This was my favorite pair of shoes!” 

“He wasn’t running in a straight line?” Sangho muttered, staring toward the recently vacated courtyard. 

“He totally has a concussion,” Y continued to laugh. 

Jinhoo punched his arm in reprimand but it didn’t stop the chuckles. 

“He’s such a brat!” Jin screamed into the ground, on the precipice of an adult tantrum.


	9. HEIST II: The Oratory of St Lawrence in Palermo, Italy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other heists will be more heisty 
> 
> But like... the Palermo job... easy man

The gentle hum of tunneling wind rushing past the window at impossible speeds and yet only nagging in a whisper at her ear, became a backdrop Sujeong faded into as she poured over her assigned reading on the tiny, plush seat. The book was heavy in her hands, wrists starting to ache as she held it aloft to mark and annotate as she progressed, a purple pen stuck behind her ear holding back a loose curtain of hair. The window framed puffy white clouds dotting the sky and a sea of white fluff below. It was a chartered plane Tag had gotten them; an approval form having been submitted to the school for a weekend leave in order to… ‘acquire necessary research supplies’ she thinks the boy had written down. To be frank, the administration was on a bit of a mental suspension ever since Gabrielle had lost her hand in the freak filling cabinet fire. 

The most suspicious thing was what exactly the school kept in the file cabinet considering that they didn’t trust electronic records or paper records or… records at all usually. They often threw coded and shredded troves of information into a vault beneath the offices, but there were locked cabinets and cupboards dusting the administrative building that no one ever knew the purpose of. Anyways, filing cabinet… hand… approval… and here Sujeong was sitting on a prop plane over the Atlantic on her way to Italy for the weekend. 

“Here’s your customs form.”

Sujeong put down her book and made eye contact with a yawning Seungmin as he offered a small form to her. “Is this a joke?”

“You can lie,” Seungmin shrugged. “We just need to hand them in when we land.” 

“Why do we even have to turn them in?” 

“Listen,” he said, sliding into the seat across from her, Tag off snoring in the corner. “It’s just a whole lot easier to deal with, so please. You can write ‘my grandma’s ashes’ for all I care.” 

Sujeong took the paper and scrawled on it for a moment before handing it back wordlessly. It read ‘my grandma’s ashes’ and nothing else. 

“You’re hilarious,” he deadpanned and threw it back at her smiling face, moving back to his own seat. 

Palermo was a tucked between some hills and the ocean, all soft yellows and greys and browns. The entire city like a pastel painting of impressionist reality. It was diluted in a way which made an elegant calm fall over the city as they sat, the three of them, at a tiny tableclothed breakfast setting with wicker chairs resting on uneven cobblestone. Tag took a long sip of his espresso, the tiny china cup clinking as he lifted it from the saucer. He immediately jolted and spat the entire drink out of his mouth across the table. 

“What the hell is this?” he garbled, smacking his lips in disgust. “It’s so bitter!” 

Sujeong lifted her heart shaped pink sunglasses with one hand and eyed the boy. “You’ve never had an espresso before?” 

“No,” he coughed out. 

“Then why did you order it?” Seungmin asked. 

Tag finally set the cup down, sputtering and letting his tongue fall out of his mouth for a moment, to cleanse it with the cool Italian air. “I thought it seemed classy.” 

“How is this classy?” Seungmin shot back, gesturing to the spoiled tablecloth. 

Tag didn’t respond, going to pick back up the coffee cup only to have it bumped out of his hand by Sujeong’s whipped hand colliding with his. Th cup went flying and smashed onto the street. 

“Why?!”

“You’re gross. We’re going,” she decided, slamming a wad of cash onto the table, and throwing her seat back abruptly as she stood. 

She lowered the hearts over her eyes with a smile, flinging her hair over her shoulder and waltzing away. The boys followed. They always followed. Tag kicked open the heavy wooden doors, the panels slamming into the narrow walls of the small stepped entrance on the sides with a loud smash that caused sad boy to almost jump out of his skin and receive a scolding from an unimpressed Seungmin as Sujeong danced inside with a skip in her step past the two. Seungmin quickly glanced down the street in both directions and tucked the doors back closed. They were met with white face of a small building in a tiny stone courtyard and processed quickly into the Oratory, attempting not to rouse any of the neighbouring ears after Sujeong’s grand entrance. 

“Do they not sleep here?” Seungmin asked. 

Sujeong glanced around the courtyard, scattered potted plants and a stray cat slinking by with its watchful gaze clinging to them. “Who?” she questioned. 

“I don’t know?” Seungmin came to stop beside her. “The priests?” 

“Well, they’re sleeping.” 

“Is that your logic?” Tag said coming up on the other side of the girl. “Because it’s night, they must be asleep.” 

“Yeah!” Sujeong chirped. 

“You what? fine,” Seungmin acquiesced, and he continued into the Oratory. 

The Oratory was a smattering of white stone carvings, bodies like ghosts on the wall, laughing, dancing, reclining in the shadowed space. The floor reminded Sujeong a mosque, a mosaic of shapes and colours. There was an altar of green and red marble, the extending hands of an angel on either side drawing their eyes to the base of an ornamental frame around the Nativity scene. Golden gilded balconies sat on either side with a gentle glint of moonlight and candlelight playing on their surface. 

“There’s nothing in here?” Tag mused once inside the doors. 

“Except a Caravaggio!” Seungmin 

“Well, yeah, but besides that.” 

Seungmin languidly rolled his head around to face Sujeong who stood behind them, face shoved in her assigned reading. She looked up in the silence to meet Seungmin’s face which showed a clear explicit emotion ‘what the fuck do I even do with him’ and shrugged. 

“Okay,” she clapped the book shut. “I’m almost done with my homework on military regime transition and it’s time to steal this fucker!” 

“Don’t say the word fucker,” Tag grumbled. “It’s a church.” 

“No, it’s not,” Seungmin responded. “It’s an Oratory.” 

“You still pray here,” Tag argued. “It’s a religious building.” 

“Yeah, but you said it was a church. An Oratory is not a church. It’s literally like anything but a church. That’s the definition. It means not a church.” 

“It is a place of prayer and I don’t want you to swear in it!” Tag yelled back. 

Sujeong was done listening to them bicker, the quips echoing in the small religious space. And Sujeong had a remarkable quality of getting them to shut up. 

“GOOD LORD!” Sujeong threw her head back and moaned into the ceiling. “Shut the FUCK up. I just came to get a Caravaggio. I love you,” she said. “Both of you. Separately. And we have…” she paused to look at her glittering crystal watch, “twenty minutes.” 

“Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence,” Seungmin breathed out in awe as they stood, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder in front of it. “Painting number two.” 

Tag started giggling as he cut the corner out of the frame, precious slices that tore the canvas at the very edge. “Tenebrism is the new black,” he got out amidst the joyous sounds erupting from his mouth. 

Seungmin sighed from his corner, dragging the knife a little too far to the right as he leaned over to chastise the other. “Okay hold on-”

“Don’t you dare rip it,” Sujeong hissed. “The Cosa Nostra won’t be happy if you do.” 

“We’re working for the mafia?!” Tag blurted, releasing the painting from his knife’s tip. 

Sujeong frowned back at the two boys poised at the Nativity. “We’re being subcontracted by the mafia in the sense that they cut all the systems for me and I said I would pay them a copious of money and give them international reprieve for like three weeks,” she explained. 

“You’re giving them a certified legal blackout?” Seungmin questioned with as much astonished curiosity as Tag, although not an ounce of the other’s palpable terror making its way into his voice. 

“It’s not certified per se…” 

“You’re going into technicalities with the mafia?!” Tag

“Listen, they like me,” she stopped him. “It’s fine. But,” she added, holding a finger up. “If we do come across any Pompeo Batoni… I should invest in an international courier service.” 

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Seungmin agreed. “Batoni’s a cop-out.” 

“It’s the mafia?!” Tag

“Yeah,” Seungmin and Sujeong simultaneously responded. 

“You triad kids…” Tag whispered with a shake of his head. 

“Look, can we just finish the job?” 

“Dude,” Tag drawled. “This is actually probably easier than the first one we did and we only came here because apparently you’re in the mafia.” 

Sujeong grumbled back something akin to a deeply mocking taunt and turned around to unsheathed the poster tube from her back. 

“How does the Italian mafia work?” Tag asked, crawling off the altar with a knife in his teeth slightly muffling the words. 

“It’s the Sicilian mafia, you idiot,” Seungmin scoffed, hopping off the elevated marble with the painting billowing out of his left hand. 

“Je ne sais rien. Ik ben dom. 私は知識が不足しています,” Tag rattled off. 

“I swear,” Seungmin handed the painting to Sujeong and began to rub his temple as soon as it was safely in her grasp. “I have an aneurysm every time you open your mouth.” 

“Why is it so difficult getting heist partners? They’re so hard to come by these days,” Sujeong murmured to herself. 

And they made it. They always would. Perhaps it wasn’t the best decision when fleeing from a crime scene contracted by the Cosa Nostra to steal a masterpiece from a place of worship to stop by the beach in the waning morning hours, staring at the stars and seeping in the silence to just… live. Perhaps they shouldn’t be half-clothed: untucked and unbuttoned shirts, a skirt bunched up so high it graced upper thighs, and light jackets discarded in the sand beneath. And perhaps the wine wasn’t the best idea, but hey, it was Italy. 

Sujeong hummed and passed the bottle of red - a beautiful Syrah she’d rather cry than leave here without taking a bottle of back to the Factory - over Tag’s flat body, seemingly making one with the sand melting into it in a puddle of boy, and slapped it into Seungmin’s waiting palm. 

“Let’s get in.” 

Both boy’s heads whipped around in alarm, but Sujeong’s eyes were latched onto the ocean before them, the tumble of waves crashing into the shoreline resounding in the darkness like a restless child of the night. 

“You want to…” Seungmin started to process her words. 

“Let’s get in,” she said again, allowing her smiling eyes to reach theirs. 

Once she had taken in both their confused faces and weighed the likelihood of herself drowning in the Tyrrhenian Sea half-drunk on the best bottle of wine she’d ever have, Sujeong let her smirk erupt. She rose up amidst their garbled contestations, shuck her shirt over her head and shimmied down her skirt. 

“It’s cold,” Tag complained, watching as the almost naked girl sprinted down the sand toward the shore. 

“Did you not drink enough?” Seungmin mused. 

“I am painfully,” Tag sighed dramatically. “Regrettably, sober.”

But of course, like Sujeong knew they would, the boys always followed. 

Skin and moon and bubbles of laughter spilling from drunkenly quenched lips rolled over the peaks of the waves as they tumbled toward the shoreline where nothing but empty bottles, a few discarded clothes, and a stolen masterpiece lay waiting. They ran around in the chilled water for a while, letting themselves get licked clean by the sea and staring at the moon, shoulder brushing shoulder brushing shoulder. There wasn’t anything so bonding as criminal comradery.


	10. Putti in the Sky with Diamonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> short one

The field outside the school’s inner walls was a pasture of perfectly manicured grass for about one hundred feet, dotted with topiaries and small benches under willow trees, before the forest started on the south end of the island and the cliffs to the east and west. Jangjun lounged on a thick woolen blanket, checkered with hunter green and a burnt yellow pattern. His back wedged into a slew of beige canvas pillows and a marron turtleneck swaddled his neck in true weekend fashion. He leisurely reclined in the afternoon light, blinking up at the heavy sun in the distance, its light penetrating each little hole in the parapets of the school’s skyline. 

The beginning of November brought with it incessant drowning stillness after Halloween, the factory’s favorite holiday. It wasn’t that the students were mostly pagans, which a sizable bit were, or that they desperately yearned for an excuse to practice their mixologist skills, which they did anyways regardless of the season. They just happened to like October. Tag had gifted Jangjun a whole range of antique sculptures and Hellenistic disks which he amassed during his great decorating heists. The first year had gone from carefully wrapping tiny sculptures and leaving them at doorsteps to simply lobbying Ancient Greek and Roman discus like they were Frisbees across the quad at people. And, boredom get the better of him, Jangjun had figured out how exactly to best put them to use. 

“The year is 2057: Banksy still has not revealed his face, but he paints a Brexit mural every 5 minutes. He is tired. The world’s walls are covered with Brexit murals. It is all a sea of blue and red. He needs sleep,” Jangjun rambled as he lay there. “All I see are stars and Banksy.” 

“Shut up, nerd!” Mijoo ordered her younger brother. 

She had just pulled down her earmuffs to rest on the curve of her neck and give her ears a breather from the clunky fabric which had been covering them, rearranging her hair around the band of it.

“They make Chanel earmuffs?” Kei asked, nodding to the other fourth year. 

“For me, they do,” the girl winked back. 

“She threatened them,” Jangjun corrected from his position behind them. “She called the atelier and threatened them.” 

Mijoo stuck her tongue out at him, slamming her right forearm down into the bent elbow of her left arm and flipping him off with the same hand. Jangjun rolled his eyes and loaded a small bronze vase into the catapult beside him. 

“This one’s a Punic era, I think,” he announced, throwing the detonator in the air and catching it with a flourish. “It’s worth more points.” 

Mijoo reloaded her rifle and cocked it against her shoulder, ready, before thinking about what he actually said. “We’re doing points?” 

“Yeah and you’re losing,” Jangjun threw back with a laugh. 

“How many do I even have?” she asked. 

“I don’t know,” her brother answered flippantly. “Like 10.”

“How many do I have?” Kei asked from the other side resting the butt of her gun in the grass and resting the barrel against her hip. 

“Probably 100,” he responded. 

Mijoo made a scoffing noise and turned around to point her gun at the boy with a vicious looking brow line. 

“Okay fine, no points,” he snickered. 

He released the vase when Mijoo turned back to the field, re-donning her muffs and yelling, “Pull!”

The arching line of it sweeping across the empty grass through her view. She shot it within two seconds, the sharp pieces flying out and scattering across the ground. 

“Nice shot,” Kei murmured appreciatively. She raised her hand and looked to Jangjun. “Can I get a Plato bust?” 

“Sure, why?” he asked, rifling around the wicker basket of antiquities he had lugged along to the field, pulling out said statute. 

“I don’t know. I’m just… feeling it.” 

“Fair enough, but…” he paused. “You have to tell me your favorite part of his Dialogues.” Kei opened her mouth to respond before Jangjun cut her off. “And if it’s not hemlock, I’ll be disappointed,” he added. 

“It’s the accusation of comedic slander actually,” she responded with a smirk.

“Acceptable,” he said after considering it with a theatrically posed finger on his chin and released the bust. 

Mijoo clapped excitedly as Kei’s shot violently burst open the philosopher’s head with a smashing sound that seemed to echo briefly off the walls of the Factory next to them. Jangjun was on the blanket rolling around in pain with his hands clamped over his head, veins straining. His sister’s loud laugh came out as she noticed the scene and Kei cringed offering a soft ‘sorry’. 

“Why didn’t you bring ear plugs, loser?” Mijoo goaded. 

“I didn’t think the marble would be that loud!” he shot back. “We’ve been doing bronze this whole time!” 

“Suck it up,” Mijoo whined. 

He sat up and placed two fingers on his nose, pinching as he blew his ears out. He sat there a moment silently and then nodded at the two girls sending them a thumbs up. 

“Okay, I’m good.” 

“Are you su-” Kei started to ask. 

“Pull!” Mijoo’s voice rang out. 

A rustle of wind came in and swiped the girl’s hair from her loose pony into her face at the exact moment her finger pressed on the trigger. The gun fell to the left slightly as she spat the strands out of her mouth with a tilt of her head. She missed the target by a hair’s length and the clay cartridge lodged itself in a tree next to a couple having a picnic. One of the girls screamed and spilled his drink all over the other girl who swatted the back of her head in response. Mijoo waved over at them in apology and added a curtsey on the end for good measure. 

“Should we stop?” Kei asked. 

“My arms getting tired anyways,” Mijoo acquiesced. 

The two plopped down beside Jangjun, Kei between the two siblings. The box on the left registering only the barest inclination of a dent in the copious amounts of gifts Tag had bestowed upon them. 

“So, how’s cyber going?” Mijoo asked her friend. 

“Oh, you know, it’s fun,” Kei said. “My eyes always hurt and I think I’ve spent more time reading through the Pentagon’s private email server than in my bed, but whatever.” 

“Oh, what’s on there?” Mijoo asked, leaning closer with a glint in her eye like the clandestine girl she was. 

“Boring stuff,” Kei answered. “It’s pretty unanimous with all the NSA shit anyways so you really only have to police one of them.” 

“Unanimous?!” Jangjun blurted. “They never agree on anything? The Pentagon uses Splenda for fucks sake!” 

Kei made confused eye contact with Mijoo and then looked to Jangjun. “How do you know that?” 

“I’m an engineer,” he said as if it answered the question. 

“And?” his sister challenged. 

“I do my research. Granular substances are great for smuggling.” 

Mijoo huffed and laid down on the blanket, stretching her legs out, awkwardly pulling at her neck tie, and placing two folded arms behind her head. “How are you actually at what you do?” she shot at her brother. 

“How are you actually good at what you do?” Jangjun mocked back. 

“Okay, how on earth am I supposed to have a conversation with you when you’re acting like an immature child?” Mijoo scolded. 

“Immature? I wasn’t the one that was held back last year,” he quipped back. 

“Oh,” Kei whispered to herself as they argued, attempted to shift away from the space between them. “That’s a low blow.” 

“I know you called mom last week to explain why you needed extra money because you blew through half of it,” she said crossing her arms. 

“How??” Kei asked him. 

“Literally blew through it,” he admitted. “That flamethrower I was working on had terrible aim.” 

“She told me,” Mijoo continued with a smirk. “Real disappointed.” 

“Well,” Jangjun sputtered before a thought passed into his head. “If I was as bad as you I’d be drunkenly scrawling love messages on the door of my crush’s room with permanent marker for the whole world to see.” 

Mijoo gasped and turned to Kei with a dropped jaw. “I told you not to tell anyone!” 

“He’s barely a person,” Kei tried to contend. “He’s like if the ghost of a conman made love to the Unabomber!” 

“Yeah! So when I say anyone, I especially mean him!” 

“So, what’d she write?” Jangjun asked wiggling his eyebrows. “Just how embarrassing was it? I don’t have any of the details.” 

“I still have a gun,” Mijoo grit out at her brother. 

“And on that note, I’m gone. Bye, loves,” he shot up and ran away, passing by the two girls from earlier and giving them a little wave. 

“Take the fucking box!” Mijoo screamed out and then flopped down when he flipped her off and did a little heel kick.


	11. Falling by the Wayside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yay for real human problems

“What the fuck!” Sujeong threw herself down onto the bench of her friend’s dorm room balcony barely missing the girl herself. 

“Hello to you too, dear,” Jin beamed up at her from her haphazard mess of blanket and leg and chunky plaid pajamas. 

“What the FUCK!” the second year repeated. “Like seriously… what the fuck?!” 

“I’m assuming you’re mad about something?” Yunsung asked from a cushy chair in the nestled in corner near the rail.

“Who the fuck do people think they are?!” 

Jin slowly reached down and patted her thigh to console her. She wordlessly discarded the tall fluted glass in her hand on the balcony’s coffee table and poured the second year a glass of bubbling gold, gingerly placing the drink directly into Sujeong’s hand and going so far as to softly wrap the younger girl’s fingers around the hilt. 

They could hear a gentle distant crash of waves upon the shoreline echoing off the walls of the factory and the castle-like bulwarks of dormitories they inhabited. Jin lived on the fifth floor of a block to the east, one of the few rooms gifted with a balcony, sharing it with Kim Nayoung, not Im Nayoung – both of whom Jangjun had recently and disastrously set his sights on – and another girl from the medical department named Haebin. It was an odd day if someone weren’t to find the third year snuggled up on said balcony at sunset with Yunsung at her side, the two of them gossiping and whispering secrets between themselves like a couple of informants. Everyone needed a stress reliever. And yes, Jin had a fully functioning bar and ostentatiously mod bar cart to boot, but it was the talking which was the real cathartic muse. 

“No one has the RIGHT to say those fucking things about me!” Sujeong ranted. “About anyone really, but ESPECIALLY about ME!” 

The two third years nodded back in understanding. 

“It’s not like we…” She stopped and switched which leg was folded over the other. “I mean I do…” she tried again, switching her legs back. “But it isn’t what people…” 

“I know,” Jin smiled at her. 

Yunsung sat silently in the corner, listening to the both of them, sipping his own frosted copper tumble, a sprig of fresh mint popping out the top and tickling the third year’s nose. 

“And like why can’t people just mind their own goddamn business!” Sujeong continued. “For God’s sake!” Jin looked at her. “For fucks sake!” she amended. “I need some Nike in my life because I am brimming with vengeance.” 

Yunsung raised his mug and shook it to get the girls’ attention with the sounding clink. “I’m no Nike,” he said, “because I’m a twenty year old man specializing in cybernetics and not an omnipotent Greek woman, but I am always here to help you, Jeong.” 

The young girl looked back toward him and let her shoulders drop the tension which had rolled on top of them. She dropped her head onto Jin’s bony shoulder beside her and curled into her friend’s side. Jin grabbed the blanket hanging from her legs and dusting the floor, rearranging it around the two of them, tucking it into the cushion in the space between Sujeong’s thigh and the seat. 

“I just wish,” Sujeong managed to get out into the quiet secluded air, “that when people spoke of me, they did it without judgement on their tongues.” 

“Oh, sweetie,” Jin petted the younger’s hair down in a motherly stroke, rings carding through the hair. “Don’t we all.” 

“If only we could go around collecting tongues and taking names,” Yunsung mused. 

“Isn’t that in the wrong order?” Sujeong asked him. 

“Not really,” the boy laughed breathily, the faint jingle of ice hitting the sides of his rounded mug. “I only need the names for record keeping purposes.” 

Both the girls chuckled out amused breathed at his remark and he basked in the ghost of a smile which rose up on the second year’s face. 

“People suck,” Sujeong decided, but the words were lighter now, a hint of humour and grace in them. 

“Yeah, they really do,” Jin added, reaching over to the table with a slight grunt to squeeze her drink into her palm once more. 

All three of them let their eyes be drawn to the cotton candy ski above the water. The sun was struggling to remain aloft at the end of the horizon, the waves of the sea licking at its bottom and dragging it down into the liquid abyss. And the white caps on the ocean themselves were dusted in a faint light from the pinks and oranges and purples erupting from the sun like saturated watercolours melting from a canvas in the heat. 

“It’s kind of pretty here,” Sujeong said after a moment. 

“Yeah,” Yunsung exhaled the word as he settled down. “People don’t usually notice until later though.” 

“Too busy with too many different things,” Jin tacked on with the same wistful intonation. 

“Can someone just tell me what to do?” 

Jin and Yunsung tried to subtly study her after the words were out, but she felt their gazes, their commiserate gazes. Eyes still nailed into the sinking sun, she heard the rustle as Yunsung moved from his chair and squished on her other side on the small bench. 

“Can someone just tell me how to fix it?” Sujeong questioned, safely between the two third year’s warm figures. 

Jin wrapped her arm around Sujeong’s back and pulled her impossibly closer. “Even you can’t change everyone’s minds, my little McCarthy.”

“I know,” the younger girl pouted. “I so wish I could.” 

“If anyone could do it, it’d be you,” Yunsung added, laying his own head on Sujeong’s bent neck. “And you’d probably start with Trotsky,” he thought aloud. 

“He deserves better,” she mumbled into Jin’s chest where her chin now rested. 

“He really does,” the boy agreed. 

There wasn’t anything so dangerous, anything as treacherous to both engage with and hide from at Genius, as the rumor mill. It was more of an out of control fire, blazing through forests and prairies uninhibited as it moved down everything in its wake. When powerful people turned to debase words, clung to them and stapled them to their foreheads to put on display, it become not the story but the name, the one speaking it, which garnered attention. You didn’t disagree with lords, you didn’t argue with oligarchs, and you didn’t tell someone with numerous criminal organizations under their family’s thumbnail to refrain from idle chats with vicious intent. That was, unless, you wanted to be spoke of yourself. Names at Genius were powerful, perhaps even more so than in the worlds they each created. 

“Do you guys think I deserve it?” Sujeong asked some time later. 

“No,” Yunsung answered immediately. “You never did anything but be happy. You made friends and they just so happened to be a devilishly handsome set of sharpened cheekbones and a soft boy who smiles at everyone he passes expect the one with the cheekbones,” he paused to laugh at the last part. “People just… they assume what they want to assume.” 

“It’s because they’re bored,” Jin offered, “bored and idiotic, filled with idiocy and boredom.” 

“I haven’t told them anything,” Sujeong mumbled and Yunsung picked his head back up so he could better stare down at her. 

“I feel like you should,” Yunsung said. “I mean if it was me, I’d want to know.” 

“You should tell them,” Jin concurred. 

“Yeah maybe,” the second year nodded her head in thought. “I might have just stopped talking to them altogether,” she admitted. 

“God,” Jin threw her head back onto the cushion. “You’re so repressed.” 

Sujeong sat up and punched her in the stomach with a limp fueled fist, the drink she had still been clutching splashing out and onto the blanket. 

“This is cashmere!” the elder complained, taking the glass from her and placing it on the coffee table. 

Sujeong shrugged and settled back down, drawing both her arms around Jin’s middle in a koala-like hug. The third year simply leaned back into the bench and wiggling her hand under the blanket to grab a hold of Sujeong’s hand. Yunsung’s head fell back down onto Sujeong and the younger hummed in appreciation at the movement. 

“Can I tell them later?” she whispered out. 

“Of course, honey,” Jin whispered back. 

It was dark when Sujeong finally extracted herself from the escapist comfort of Jin’s balcony, the steady heartbeats of the two older students having lulled her into a sense of security that allowed her to pick herself back up again and face the school once more, the words still stuck in her back like daggers but the bleeding long since stopped. Yunsung simply scooted over to Jin’s side when Sujeong passed back into the triple room, the echo of their hushed conversation barely meeting her ears as she grabbed the bag she had discarded at the door around an hour earlier and walked into the hall. She had never quite learned what was the relationship between the two she often jokingly called her parents, but then again, was that the reason she was angry in the first place? People assuming those ambiguously friendly relations without any ground to stand on. 

She shuffled down the corridor to one of the few elevators on campus, the only one in a place of residence, and calmly waited, shucking the bag further onto her shoulder with a huff as the machine thundered up from the second floor to meet her. As it neared, she could increasingly make out words which drifted up from beyond the wooden elevator doors, wrought cage around it always left open and an annoying draft rising up the shaft along side the car. 

_“I bet she has a favourite,”_ one voice giggled. 

_“I mean who wouldn’t,” another supplied._

_“Wait,”_ the first voice paused. _“I bet she tell them each they are.”_

_“Nooooo! That’s so bad. God, what a slut.”_

_“That’s what I would do,”_ the voice came accompanied by boisterous laughter. _“Keep ‘em both happy.”_

_“One’s not good enough for her. What is she insatiable?”_

_“Okay, if I had to pick one - which I’m not - but if I had to…”_ the voice trailed off. _“Seungmin.”_

Sujeong went rigid. The elevator shuddered as it docked on the fifth floor right before her. 

"I bet Tag’s better. He just looks like he’d be, you know?” a girl smirked as the doors slid open revealing Sujeong’s betrayed face standing there alone in the hallway. “Oh,” the girl faltered as they made eye contact. “Hi, Sujeong.” 

The friend grabbed her arm and pulled the girl from the elevator waving awkwardly as they tried to sneak past her. 

“For the record, Sujeong bit out and they stopped in their tracks. “I’m not with either of them,” and she pushed past them into the space, slammed her hand down on the button and watched their stunned faces as the doors slammed shut between them.


	12. HEIST III: The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Nederlands

The screen almost blinding Seungmin as he pulled his phone from his pocket, quickly blundering his hands around the small device until the light dissipated with a swipe of his finger. “Jeong says good luck,” he read aloud. 

“Thank god,” Tag mused from his position reclined against the makeshift wall of a concert stage. “I was getting worried.”

“About the heist?” the shorter questioned. “You’re never nervous. You don’t get nervous.”

“No, about her,” Tag corrected. “She hasn’t talked to me in like… two weeks.”

Seungmin stuffed his phone back into his jacket and looked across the bare field toward the museum. “I just thought it was because she was studying,” he said, gaze trained on the guard rounding the curve of the building. 

“No, I really think something happened,” the other boy insisted. “Obviously I wouldn’t really know because she didn’t tell me because she won’t talk to me,” he complained. 

“Awwn,” Seungmin teased, turning to him in the darkness. “It’s like you care.” 

“You know we’ve never once had an actual conversation,” Tag said. 

Seungmin hummed in response, swiveling back to face the museum. 

“I don’t think I hate it,” Tag continued. 

Seungmin scoffed. “But you don’t always think.” 

“Yeah. I don’t.” 

“Because you’re so fucking stupid,” Seungmin taunted. 

“Yeah. I am.”

Seungmin’s shoulders tensed as if he were about to say something the other but the guard had finally rounded to the back of the grey, solid curve leaving the glass atrium wall open and the boy decided some things were important in that very moment. He tapped Tag’s arm and sprinted across the open field, Tag right beside him and the duffel he carried slapping against his back with each foot forward. They moved swiftly to the railing surrounding the building, Seungmin sliding under the lowest rung and dropping down and Tag, foot pressing on the same rod, propelling himself over the top to land adjacent the other boy. 

Of course they exteriors camera were there but the small electromagnetic block Tag had strapped to his thigh would render any footage corrupted. Besides, they’d just appear as black streaks in the night to any other cameras in the vicinity, of which there were minimal considering it was a giant public park. Seungmin bent down on his needs beside a section of glass, cutting through it with a small welding tool, the sparking flame making it clean through the thick material and creating a whole large enough for his arm to snake through. 

“Why couldn’t I do that?” Tag whined. 

“Because you’d be missing a finger by now if I let you,” Seungmin shot back, his cheek now pushed against the building’s façade, arm up to his shoulder crammed into the museum, hand groping for the security box. “Ha!” he called out when his hand made contact with some wires. 

Tag jumped at the noise. “Don’t do that,” he hissed down at the other. 

“You can tell me what to do when you learn how to disarm a museum security system,” Seungmin argued back. “It’s like you don’t trust me.” 

“Hey, I trust you.” 

Seungmin stopped all his movement and chose to simply stare at Tag with an expressionless raised eyebrow. 

“Not with my life, but I trust you!”

Seungmin chuckled as he felt around the space where the wires disappeared inside a box, and yanked the third and fifth from it. 

The small light on the door beside them turned green with a beep. 

“Good job,” Tag breathed out, reaching his gloved hand out to grab the handle. 

“Nuh, uhn,” Seungmin tisked. “I turned off the alarm. I get to open the door.” 

Tag let his mouth fall open, amazed. “Are you being serious right now?” 

“Yeah. I am. I should get to go first.”

“It doesn’t really matter that much,” Tag contended. 

“If it doesn’t matter than why aren’t you letting me?”

“Because I want to!” Tag’s voice came out slightly too loud and the boy instantly clapped a hand over his mouth with wide eyes. 

Seungmin sent him a mocking look and pulled the door open. 

They walked inside, gear in tow and paused, re-jogging their memories of the museum’s layout in their heads. A sudden noise behind them had both boys jolting and whipping around in a cold sweat only to see the door had just latched itself closed behind them. Seungmin breathed out a sigh and Tag could practically imagine the shorter pouting underneath his mask. They moved from blind-spot to blind-spot on the sliver of a chance that the pulse ceased working, but Jangjun had made it for them and he was, if not unsteadily narcissistic, considerably reliable for high tech gear. 

Seungmin scurried ahead, his body in line to walk straight into the path of an interior guard who waltzed around the center of the museum. Tag’s hand shot out and caught hold of the other’s collar, dragging him backward and into his arms which enveloped the boy’s small body, hand rising to quiet Seungmin’s inevitable protest. The click of their shoes came nearer and nearer still, a beam of light darting out and sprawling itself across the floor, dangerously close to the tips of Seungmin’s shoes. It waved back and forth in a sweep before ambiguously floating along the opposite wall and returning to the guard’s own feet. The ex-roommates relaxed as the footfalls faded in a distant corridor and Tag released the other boy. 

“You’re welcome,” he said. 

Seungmin rolled his eyes at him and strolled onward, stopping when he noticed Tag hadn’t moved. 

The other stood still behind him, tapping his foot on the floor. “Is it really that hard to say thank you?” 

Seungmin threw his arms in the air and threw back a dramatically articulated, “Thanks.” 

They continued on their way toward the correct gallery space, having memorized the layout and on constant eggshells alerted to the interior guards’ movements. It had gotten considerably easier as time went on, to navigate these museum. A common sense labyrinth of beautiful things and when Tag thought about it, he really didn’t need a map at all, simply flowing with the frames and the oils to find even more beautiful things right where he expected them to be. As he thought this, allowing his mind to wander at what some might consider not the most opportune time, they came around a wall and Tag’s duffel swung out. It nearly flew passed the electronic line that rested before the wall of masterpieces save for Seungmin noticing, diving forward, and slapping it out of the way in a flurry. Neither said anything to the matter, choosing to nod in acknowledgment of the situation instead with a heavy eye contact to accompany it. 

And then they found it: Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Neunen by Vincent van Gogh. It was soft and it was harsh. Tag could taste an autumn breeze on his tongue as he saw the orange tinged leaves and yet the thin black spire of the church felt like a lance had plunged itself inside through his rib-cage. Seungmin thought he began to hear the whispers of the faceless mob of a crowd outside, the crunch of the earth beneath their shoes audible too. They both, inexplicably, thought of Salem. Despite the blue sky and the dispersed trees, they both pondered a dense wood scattered with hanged bodies swaying in the breeze. But there was also something so peaceful about it, penetrating the unknown anxiety, that rolled in like a loose crinkled leaf across the ground. 

“It’s…” Seungmin tried to say. 

“Yeah,” Tag murmured back. 

“Okay. Grab it,” Seungmin blurted, motioning to the work. 

“You know the cameras are going to turn back on,” Tag said. “You ready?” 

Seungmin nodded. 

Tag stalked forward, ripping his magnetic pulse from his leg and sticking onto the tiny silver pile erupting from the floor. 

“Did it work?” Seungmin asked. 

“Let’s see.” 

Tag slowly reached his hand forward, inch by inch by inch. The open air seemed to sizzle before his finger tips and then they came to rest against the bare oiled canvas before him and he gasped at the contact. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it worked.”

Such a shame what little reverie white collar art theft afforded during the sin of the act itself, for neither boy was allowed the luxury to simply take in the painting before them before they were slicing, bagging, and toting the thing out of the museum. Now, there was a choice to make: either the boys would maintain their original route of travel and, calmly and carefully, make their way from one blind-spot to another which was agonizingly slow, or they could simply make a run for it, a somewhat clandestine run for it. One of these was of course a lot faster and Sujeong was not there to be the voice of reason they desperately needed, so they ran for it. Which was not the right decision because, not ten seconds later, a guard had spotted them and shouted their location into a walkie-talkie. 

Their feet thundered through the halls towards the open door they had used to enter. The guard had fallen behind the boy’s quick pace. That was, until, Seungmin skidded to a stop before a painting, his feet almost sliding out from under him. 

“Should we take View of the Sea at Scheveningen,” Seungmin asked, catching his breath, chest heaving. 

Tag blankly blinked back at him. 

“So yes?”

“FUCKING TAKE IT!” Tag screamed at him and grabbed the entire frame off the wall.

It was a nightmare getting out the museum with a duffel, an entire 14 by 20 and a half inch framed picture of a seascape courtesy of Seungmin’s chaotic impulsion that weighed more than it looked like, and at least six guards chasing them all yelling in Dutch. They paused to catch their breath atop a bridge, spanning a rather wide canal and looked at each other, frazzled, harried, panting. There was deafening, dizzy array of sirens and the head-pounding, heart-thumping echo of dozens of feet thundering through the narrow streets. 

“One just wasn’t enough was it?” Tag got out, hand grasping for purchase on the rain beside him, doubled over, body physically falling apart, tendon by tendon, stitches in his lung unraveling as he laboriously breathed. 

“I wanted another Van Gogh!” Seungmin defended, in a similar state, the duffel across his shoulder as Tag lugged said painting. 

“You don’t need another Van Gogh!” Tag’s eye seethed a situational anger Seungmin believed was unparalleled by even the navy guys on Seal Team Six who looked down their snipers in Bin-Laden’s complex in 2011 at the man who destroyed America. Yeah, he thought, this was worse. 

“Who died and made you god?” he rallied back, not knowing what words he was speaking until they were out of his words. 

“Why don’t you just sate my curious ego and stab me now??” Tag spat at him, the painting slipping in his finger towards the cobblestone of the bridge. 

“No!” 

Tag lunged across the bridge, amidst sirens and stomping and the fucking city electrified, with the knife he had used to extract the Reformed Church from its clunky frame, wrapped his hand wrapped Seungmin’s and held the tip of the blade to his stomach, pressing into the flesh there. Seungmin attempted to wrestle away from the crazy eyed boy, choking on his own heartbeats in fear and overwhelmed from the knotted ropes of their situation, searing into his ankles as he drown, tying him to a goddamn bowling ball. 

And then, well, neither boy was sure what happened but the tension of the knife dropped to the earth as it plunged into Tag’s stomach. The taller boy spat out a string of sticky blood that dripped down his chin in a bright crimson river. Seungmin gaped and pressed his flat open palms onto the other’s torso over the hole. Tag dropped the captured sea and let it tumble into the canal below the bridge. Ironic, maybe. Fitting, perhaps. A police car rounded the corner with a skid a hundred yards away and Seungmin did the only thing he thought was appropriate, the only option really. He tackled Tag into the water. 

\---

Around ten minutes later they were still beneath the bridge, hunkered and shivered, soaked through. Tag was lain on the uneven stone ruins of the canal’s river bed, black jacket tied around his waist after Seungmin had hand-sewn him back together again. Tag had drifted in and out of consciousness again, Seungmin slapping him awake each time. 

“You could have left me,” Tag coughed out, voice gritty and grating on the other’s ears.  
Seungmin remained silent, cradling Tag’s head in his lap. 

“And explained to Sujeong how the hell that happened?” he muttered. 

Tag hummed in affirmation. “She can be pretty scary.”

Seungmin shifted, attempting to crane his head around in an attempt to pear onto the street so they could finally move out of the freezing winter water. 

He was stopped by a strong hand gripped around his wrist as he had started to stand and looked down to see Tag staring at him. 

“Please don’t leave me,” the boy said. “I don’t want to be alone.”


	13. Regrets, I've had a Few

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *me sitting in the corner* I love noir <3

Tag wasn’t sure how he got here, angrily kicking into the frozen bushes on the side of the bio-chemical department, foot disappearing into the icy branches as he struck it forward muttering to myself, the harsh snap the only sound around him other than his own labored breaths. It wasn’t exams. No, those were fine. They were basically a cop-out first year considering half the courses were introductions to weed out unsuitables and the other half cross-disciplinary mismatches to teach the actual basic technical and theoretical skills they needed once they officially chose their disciplines. Of course, kids didn’t come in taking Introduction to Hacking, Fragility of the Human Body, and Let’s Talk about Bioweapons. That’d be ridiculous. He’d have them admitted to psych ward. Well, not a psych ward but one of those expensive, secret island retreats that specialized in yoga and meditation. No, it, decidedly, wasn’t exams. 

It wasn’t Sujeong either because the girl still wasn’t talking to him which he had learned, after asking Mijoo, was a rather intentional defense mechanism young women deployed when they wanted to avoid frustrating emotions that most surely stemmed from the person they were avoiding, or at least someone who reminded them of it. Although, now that he thought about it, how unfair was that? Like honestly, she could have just told him what was wrong the second it happened and they wouldn’t be in this weird liminal space between spending every day together and suddenly becoming mortal enemies. Not that they were… because they weren’t. That’s not even what he was mad about. And maybe mad wasn’t the right word, but frustrated. Yeah, okay, he was extremely frustrated. 

Tag huffed and kicked into the defenseless plant once again. It was dark out. Not because he had faced a whole demanding day and suddenly needed a release but because he had yet to face one. He waited for the sun to peek into his little bubble of self-catharting and threw an empty glass bottle into the snow drifts beside him before loosing his balance on a particular swift kick and flopping down into the grass, still in his uniform for the day before, crumpled and stiff and now covered in spots from his amber coated solution. His thick padded coat hung open and he shivered violently whenever the wind blew in despite the warmth in his belly. He wasn’t sure where his tie had gone but then again it didn’t matter. 

There are only a handful of moments in his life which Tag truly regretted and perhaps this moment, huddled into a snow cocoon most surely doing nothing good for his health, should have been near the top of that list but no, Tag was lain, possibly freezing to death, regretting a different moment all together. It was a lot easier to wallow in grandiose self-pity when a cold creeping loneliness swaddled your entire body in an indigo night and the nothing but the moon stared back at you. Tag was, what he would like to think, misunderstood. He had good intentions, but intentions didn’t matter when the all the world could see were the blundering, floundering mistakes of good intentions. 

Yein and Hoyeon found him lying there surrounded by bottles of Grand Marnier and, of course, a box of sugar cubes. The phone had in his pocket had begun blazing and blaring the second the awful sting of morning’s first rays shot onto his face, but he hadn’t answered. He peeked open one eye as he heard their footsteps approached, padding down the snow in a soft tread, and then quickly scrunched it back closed again after he saw who it was. His lips quivered, almost stuck together at the dry chill of the island. Yein came to rest a few inches away from his body and sighed. He imagined her hands on her hips, body cocked to the side in a superiority complex laden annoyance. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Oh hey,” he said staring at the back of his eyelids. 

“No serious,” she said again. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Tag took a deep breathe, the icy chill of the early hours piercing into his lungs. “Okay, I know I didn’t use cognac but they don’t have any of the good stuff here. You’re being a little too harsh about it.” 

When neither of his friends moved to answer, Tag continued. “I asked like two people. And it’s not like I was going to drink Hennessy. I’m not a savage.”

“That is not what I meant and you know it,” he heard Yein say and didn’t reply. “Tag,” she warned. “Youngtaek.” 

“Ew,” he groaned at the name. “What?” 

“We have class,” she said.

“So?” he asked, opening his eye again to stare at her. 

Yein pouted angrily at him and nudged Hoyeon with an expectant look. 

“Yeah,” the boy cleared his throat awkwardly. “We have class.” 

“I’m not going,” Tag answered. “I’m depressed.”

“No, you’re not,” Hoyeon corrected, bending down to grab the other boy’s limp arm from the ground. “Get up,” he said with a forceful tug. “You’re going to get hypothermia.”

“Nooo,” he whined, slashing his body about in an attempt to get Hoyeon’s hold to loosen. “I don’t wanna.” 

“We have a fucking exam”

Tag paused his writhing. “We do?”

“Oh my god,” Yein grumbled. “I don’t even care anymore. Just leave him.” 

Hoyeon instantly dropped Tag the few inches to the snow and the boy lazily rolled over onto his stomach, the cold immediately seeping into his pants where the coat failed to cover, and propped himself up on his elbows, the sharp points sinking into the padding of powder beneath him. He then noticed an upended, half-screwed bottle of Grand Marnier and dragged it through the snow to him, sloshing it about to study the contents. He made a humming sound, uncorked it, and poured the dribble of bitter orange tinted liqueur into his open mouth, catching it on his tongue. 

“Will you pass me the sugar?” he pointed to the box at Yein’s feet. 

She made direct eye contact with him, picked it up, and then threw it as far away as possible, the tiny box disappearing into the now with a finite swoosh. “No.” 

Tag flopped onto his stomach in protest and stuffed his face into the snow. “You can’t be just that mean to people.” 

“And you can’t just be a hermit,” Yein bitterly threw at the pouting boy. 

“Cezanne was a hermit and no one yelled at him!” Tag argued. 

“Cezanne died because he collapsed alone in a field!” Yein yelled back at the boy. “You need a better role model!” 

“Oh my god really?” Hoyeon asked. 

Yein turned to Hoyeon. “What?” 

“He collapsed in a field?” Hoyeon clarified. “And Tag is…” he trailed off with a amazed little smile popping up on his face. “I just- what a coincidence.” 

“Hoyeon, the exam,” the girl reminded him. 

“Oh right. Yeah.” 

“I don’t want to take it!” Tag called up angrily. 

“Well you have to!” Yein scolded him. 

Hoyeon stepped back and awkwardly watched them, not exactly knowing who he should be supporting but leaning less towards the drunk boy rolling on the ground and more towards one of the only sane people he knew on campus. 

Tag groaned out a visceral noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl and then followed it with a stern, “I don’t want to!” 

“Why?!” Yein spat at him with an aggressive confusion Hoyeon himself was starting to foster. “Give me a reason! I don’t even care if it’s a bullshit one just give me an excuse!” 

“Because!” Tag yelled. 

“Because why?!” She prompted. 

“BECAUSE SEUNGMIN SAYS I’M STUPID!” he finally screamed and then quieted back down with a seeping tension seemingly melting the boy’s body into the frozen earth. 

“Tag…” Yein breathed out. 

“Nope. Don’t want your pity.” 

“Tag,” Hoyeon stepped back forward again. “You’re not stupid.” 

“Yes, I am,” he pouted. “I made us loose a Van Gogh and now I’m going to fail my exam. He was right. He’s always right. I’m an idiot.” 

“You’re not,” Yein insisted. 

“Yeah!” Tag argued. “I am!” 

“Why do you always listen to him?” Hoyeon’s soft voice drifted in and had both of them turning. “I mean, correct me if I’m wrong,” he continued with their attention, “but you seem to care an awful lot about what your ex-roommate thinks of you.” 

“You’re wrong,” tag mumbled. 

“What?” the other boy questioned. 

“You said correct you, if you were wrong,” the boy explained quietly. “You’re wrong.”

“Maybe you are an idiot,” Yein whispered, although apparently not quiet enough to go unnoticed. 

“Hey, I am in a dark place right and you-”

“Tag” Hoyeon interrupted him. “Your lips are blue.” 

Tag gingerly reached a hand up to his icy lips, the cracked skin bumpy beneath his fingers. “Ah fuck! Get me up.” 

Hoyeon turned to Yein and she reluctantly nodded at him. He then scooped down and placed Tag’s stomach on the back of neck, heaving the boy across his shoulders. Tag’s long limbs sprawled over Hoyeon’s body, the boy struggling to keep them both upright. 

“Okay, faithful peasant. Now over there,” Tag flung a hand point and pointed toward a small hole in the snow. 

Hoyeon didn’t move. 

“You’re taking me to get the sugar, right?” he asked him, lifting his head in confusion. 

He saw Yein mutely standing there, arms crossed, cheeks rosy where they popped out from the wide scarf around her neck, glaring at him. 

“Is that a no to the sugar?” he asked her. 

Yein nodded slightly and mouthed a silent ‘no’ at him. Hoyeon dutifully followed her when she turned to walk to their exam. A bio-chemical second year started to pass by through the front doors and then quickly did a double take at Hoyeon lumbering through the high snow on the side of the building and fire-man carrying a boy. The elder paused, door propped open, and gaped at them with a confused tilt of his head and narrowed eyes. 

“Don’t you have a final right now?” the student asked them. 

Hoyeon glanced up at the recognizable voice. “Yeah, why?” 

The other continued to stare, as if searching for the words he wanted to say and failing to find anything appropriate. His brow wrinkled deeper in puzzlement as he grappled with the situation. 

“What are you-”

“Siheon, I have to go,” Hoyeon puffed out, the air in front of him rolling with his visible breath, as he adjusted Tag on his shoulder with a hop. “I have a test, gosh.” 

The first year shouldered past Siheon into the building, nodding to his friend, and accidentally whacked Tag’s head into the door frame as he tried to maneuver them through the threshold. 

“Ow!” Tag yelled, grabbing the back of his head. 

“Oh shut up,” Yein scoffed. “You can complain after the exam.”


	14. The Y-Sang-Hoo Party

Sujeong flipped over to the next page of her book, scanning her eyes down the pages of a biography as she waited outside Heochan and Yeonkuk’s dissertation meeting in the south hallway of the government building. Unfortunately, the south hallway was known to have quite a draft from a broken window no one had ever fully repaired and she found, to preserve her body heat, she had to fold her legs up to her chest. That broken window was the entire reason people weren’t allowed to skateboard in the academic buildings now. Not any grand event or insanely convoluted plot, they just couldn’t skateboard and now… no one else could either. Maybe it was the dip in front of Lecture Theatre A that showed up one morning after the while building was hit by an artificial earthquake some kid in the engineering accidentally set off. Who knew.   
Someone stopped in front of the bench, a subtle laugh flowing out and a pat on their friend’s back before they paused to wave their hand next to Sujeong’s head. “Hey, do you mind if I sit down?” they asked. 

She eyed the boy for a second with her finger paused behind the next page and then stretched her legs out languidly, slowly crossing her ankles when her feet reached the end of the seat.   
“Where?”

“Uh…” they faltered, reaching up and scratching the side of their head. “Nevermind, I guess.” 

Her body shook at the wind and she angrily pulled her blazer tightly closed across her chest, burrowing into the layers of fabric swaddling her. The door across the hall opened and the two boys she was looking for filed out together, a litany of papers and binders in their arms. 

“What’s up, Jeong?” Yeonkuk asked, weaving through the throng of students going to class and leaning against the corridor wall beside her. 

She quietly took the pen of her hair and placed into the book, lowering it into her lap and smiled up at the fourth year. “Sir Joshua Reynolds is a plagiarizing, pyromaniac owl who doesn’t deserve his title.”

“You seem mad,” he mused. “Wanna tell me or…”

“I finished my exams and I don’t want to talk about anything,” she grinned. “Also,” she added with grin. “We’re going to the Y-Sang-Hoo party.” 

“Wait,” Heochan waltzed over after slipping his name card into the box resting on the wall. “Why is he an owl?” 

“Because he looks like an owl, duh,” the second year shot back. 

Heochan hesitated and slowly faced his dissertation partner. “How am I even supposed to respond to that?” 

“Don’t need to,” Sujeong shot up and snapped her fingers in his face. “We got a party to get ready for.” 

“It’s 3 o clock in the afternoon,” Yeonkuk said, holding up his watch. 

“And off we go, losers!” she announced, marching down the hall, a pair of bleary-eyed fourth year boys shuffling after her. 

The Y-Sang-Hoo party, or rather parties, were hosted twice monthly in Greyson room 257 by all three boys despite only two of them living together and in said hall. Sangho’s roommate had graduated last year and, through a remarkable feat of paperwork forgery, the boy somehow convinced the school’s administration that the older decided to repeat a year and remain on campus. Therefore, on paper, Sangho and Woosung were still happily sharing their residence together. But the parties, they were a Genius staple. They were just exclusive enough to remain tantalizing and just accessible to reach proverbial word of mouth. Y had an affinity for concocting the perfect cocktail, engineering exactly the correct alcohol saturation in a drink to get a kid in a buzzed-happy state that lasted twice as long as any other student’s attempt. Sangho had an amazing network for obtaining base level narcotics and liked to hand out nameless syringes as surprise party favours; They never did anything bad, never anything irreversible. And Jinhoo, well, everyone liked Jinhoo. He was a damn good host. 

And, apparently, Jinhoo had also ordered a slip n’ slide from god knows where. If she had to guess, Sujeong would say Canada or Russia considering there was no way in hell he had been planning this for that long and they were the shortest shipping times. It stretched down the corridor over the wooden planks, taped to the sides before the doors in a haphazard smattering of duct tape. There was foam, or equally likely bubbles, on top of it, flowing with the rush of water that was aimed to an open window, a small waterfall no doubt pouring over the side of the second story opening. Jangjun, stood at the end of it, tux pants, bare feet and chest, and a slim black tie secured around his forehead, the tail leaning down the side and flapping into his face as he jumped up and down. Heochan fist bumped the second year as they carried Sujeong over the gushing river in the hall and toward room 257. They, of course, were carrying her because Sujeong may have pre-gamed too hard. Surprisingly, they made it across the slip n’ side, Sujeong, mostly dry, stumbling through the door with Heochan on one side and Yeonkuk on the other, her heels barely brushing the floor as they clasped her arms around their shoulders. 

“What kind of bougie ass child has famous art on their walls?” she rambled directly into Yeonkuk’s ear. “Vauxcellessss,” she spat out like the name offended her, hissing the end. 

“No one knows who you’re talking about,” he reminded her. “I didn’t ten minutes ago and I don’t now.” 

Sujeong dropped her head onto his shoulder. “Because he’s lame!” 

“Oh look, it’s Byun!” Heochan chirped and slid out from under Sujeong’s arm, drawing his arm back from supporting her waist. 

Yeonkuk grabbed his bicep with his free arm. “Don’t you dare leave me with her.” 

“Bye!” the boy offered and bounded off. 

Sujeong attempted to jump out of the fourth year’s arms but he tightened his arm around her waist. “Woah, woah. Where do you think you’re going?” 

She went rigid and Yeonkuk’s eyes followed the direction she had tried to go. Y stood there with Kei, smiling and handing out drinks to people left and right in unnecessarily sparkling crystal rocks glasses. Kei was reaching over and plopping cocktail umbrellas in which Y, in vain, attempted to take out again and throw in the trash. A few of the awful green ornaments made it off, toted away by giggling students, a few more inebriated of the bunch promptly poking themselves in the eye as they took their first sips to which Y gawked and gestured to the girl as if to say, ‘I told you so’ before filling more orders. A slew of the best liquors and booze sat aligned on the counter before them in an array of expensive multi-coloured bottles. The glass shook and clanked lightly as the music boomed, a hearty rock bass line that rocked the room. Yeonkuk supressed a disapproving sigh and met Sujeong’s guilty face with an unimpressed mask. 

“Really?”

“I’m a growing girl!” she defended. 

All of a sudden, Yeonkuk’s relaxed, his hand slipping down her waist as it loosened. She followed his gaze and saw Mijoo in corner stuck to someone’s neck like a lamprey, which was… it was interesting. Sujeong took advantage of the fourth year’s distracted state and quickly propelled herself into the crowd of milling, dancing students. She released the tension from her body and swayed into the figures around her, all giddy and free. She spun around and stopped abruptly once she saw who was in front of her, staring back. The second year swivelled on her heel to go hide, frantically looking for a large piece of furniture to dive behind. As soon as she turned around to run, Y was right there with a knowing look and an effortlessly graceful wink. He grabbed the girl by her shoulders and pivoted her into his chest, trapping her from a hasty retreat, Seungmin at her back. 

“Oh hey, Jeong. Thanks for coming.” 

“Y, I will gut you like a biblical sacrifice,” she grit out into his chest, eyes wide in anger. “Consider yourself Isaac.” 

He laughed out brightly in her face. “Nah, you won’t,” he said. “Also Isaac doesn’t get sacrificed.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” she shot back. “I haven’t read the bible.” 

“Then why would you-”

“Don’t make me do it,” she pleaded up at him and donning a heavy pout, sticking out a vibrantly red lip. “Please, it’s so awkward.” 

“You think it’s awkward?” the elder questioned. “Seungmin comes to me when a museum changes it’s temporary exhibit and he doesn’t think it fits with the theme of the permanent exhibit.” 

“Run away with me,” she coaxed, completely changing her tactic yet again. “We’d be happy together.” 

“Nope. That’s it. You take her,” he promptly stopped her and threw the girl into Seungmin’s arms, leaving. 

They stood there silent; glazes locked. Black Sabbath blasted in the background behind them and filling the space with throaty vocals and an electric-tinged guitar riff. There was a shout from the hallway, followed by a loud thud and a groan accompanied with a chorus of disgruntled boos. A creaking noise gradually grew in volume until a bunch of screams and a crash erupted before a thunder of running feet and a deafening silence. A sudden cy of victory, faint and seemingly from a greater distance than the hallway faintly drifted up, joined a second later by cheers and hollers. 

“Hi?” Seungmin offered in the intense eye-contact. 

Sujeong made a weird, uncomfortable noise in the back of her throat. 

“Wanna tell me why you’ve been avoiding me?” 

“Oh god,” she whispered. “I can’t do it.” 

“Sujeong, come on,” he groaned. 

She held up a finger. “One sec.” 

She tapped the nearest person’s should, a girl’s bare skin, and they turned around to greet her. Before the girl could get a word out, Sujeong stole the drink right out of her hand and drained it in one go like a shot, which it most definitely was not considering it was a tall rocks glass about 2/3 of the way full with a clear liquid she didn’t look that closely at and no more than three ice cubes inside. Sujeong sputtered as she reached the bottom of the glass. The girl gave her an odd look and then shrugged, being pulled away by her friend. 

“Was it gin?” Seungmin asked. 

“I thought it was a vodka spritzer,” she coughed back. “I fucking HATE gin.” Seungmin nodded back at her and decided to mentally psych herself up. “Okay, fuck it. I guess it’s time.” 

She darted her hand out, bracelets jingling and ruby red nails almost scratching his skin at the abrupt and ill-coordinated motion. Seungmin simply stood there and let her trap and encase his wrist in a grip which was less determined friend and more a vice like squeeze of anxious energy. She pulled him through the dancing students, stumbling as they rocked back into them but maintaining a strong grip in the disoriented thump of the music and the flashing lights, crystal chinking in joyous cheers and smashing to the ground beneath in flurries of sparkling glass and liquor and jumping feet. And yes, maybe Sujeong had caught Tag’s figure near the door to the bathroom when she first came in and decided to avoid him. Tag was already trailing his eyes after them as they navigated the minefield that was the makeshift dancing space and more than willing to follow after them once he too had gotten his first trapped. She led into them the hall, not bothering to pick her feet up as she sloshed through the artificial river of plastic and bubbles and down a few steps in the stairwell. The speakers behind them slipped firmly into the booming symbol of Beethoven’s 9th and her heart beat along with the impossibly frenetic percussion. 

“I’m not going to say sorry,” she started, “because I don’t really have anything to apologize for.” 

Both boys opened their mouths to protest but she shot them a look and watched them wait to speak, itching to defend themselves 

“But neither of you did anything wrong either,” she continued. “And maybe I didn’t handle it the best way,” Tag scoffed at her words, “but I think I just have to get over it.” 

“Jeong,” Seungmin softly said. “Just tell us what happened. We’re here for you. We’re your friends.” 

She couldn’t stop the staccato beat of laughter which escaped her. “You two?” she questioned. “Even you’re friends?” 

Seungmin looked at Tag for a moment. “Yeah,” he answered her still looking at the boy. “Yeah, we’re getting there.” 

Tag looked away quickly and placed a hand on Sujeong’s shoulder. “Just tell me who I need to poison?”


	15. December the 22nd - Salzburg, Germany

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seungmin is referencing the Shining, i'm being cliche

Heavy flurries of snow drifted down in the streetlamp lit square of Alter Markt, a couple people flitting around the central fountain which had long since frozen over and now sat bare and empty. Three pairs of boots shuffled through the drifts, wrapped in cozy coats, Sujeong’s fluffy fur bomber of mink or ferret or whatnot was dotted with snowflakes like a dusting of powdered sugar sieved over a cake. Her hair was tied into an impossibly high ponytail that Tag had not stopped staring at since she put it in, in awe of the long stream of hair flowing down her in back in one perfect tendril. 

“What? I don’t have any sisters,” the boy explained when Seungmin caught him staring at it bouncing from side to side as Sujeong skipped through the narrow European streets. 

They passed by a Louis Vuitton, dark in the night hours, sign flipped and the windows covered with an iron gate, ornamental and all, but a thick gate, nonetheless. This did not seem to deter Sujeong at all who insisted they ‘go in’ whatever that meant. She longing stared at the windows, through the bars mind you, and wistfully sighed. 

“Sujeong,” Tag scolded her. “We’re not robbing Vuitton.” 

“I never said rob. I just wanna look!” 

“No. You don’t ‘just want to look’. I know you,” Tag said and kept walking until he realized she had stopped in the middle of the street, a tiny furry little figure pouting in the empty space. 

He paused, waiting for her. Seungmin came to realize both of them were not following and stopped as well. 

“Okay, but committing crimes for the sake of art. Robbing museums. How are we any different from Christian Philipp Muller’s ‘Illegal Border Crossing’ from 1993?” she shouted at Tag. 

Both boys remained silent. 

“Yeah, I didn’t like my argument either,” she gave in quickly when they didn’t reply and trudged over to them.  
Across the middle of the Staatsbrücke bridge spanning the Salzach river in the middle of Salzburg because everything in the goddamn town started with an S and sounded the same to the three non-German speakers, Sujeong stopped again. The girl had tried to insisted on their way there from the factory that she was fluent and then proceeded to butchered a phrase that, when Seungmin was finally able to decode, translated something akin to asking the way to the nearest pottery studio. Who knows, maybe she liked sculpturing. 

“I’m cold,” Sujeong pouted. 

Seungmin blinked some snow from his eyes as he unknotted and took off his patchwork scarf. He threw it at her without a second’s thought. 

“Chivalry isn’t dead after all,” she beamed at him. 

“Neither am I,” Tag droned, now beside her. “Despite many useless efforts toward the contrary,” he lamented 

“Oh, it’s Burberry,” she realized after studying the scarf. “I’m boycotting Burberry,” she added definitively, handing it back to Seungmin. 

Seungmin looked down at the fabric and then at her. He ignored her and turned around to continue walking. 

“No, you’re right. That’s silly. It’ll never work,” she said to herself. “I have too many raincoats,” she mused, wrapping it around her neck and snuggling into its warmth. 

They soon wandered into the Gastlokal Fridrich: an unassuming door along a packed street, a skip away from the Mozart residence, and tucked underground like a cave which curved stone ceilings and a relaxing classical jazz dancing in the space. There were two overtly glittered women stood behind the bar, deftly mixing cocktails and pouring pints. Tag primped his hair and smoothed his shirt collar down, popping on a lazy smirk and starting to waltz over before Seungmin grabbed his collar and pulled the lanky boy off balance and towards an empty table Sujeong had claimed. 

“Oh it’s so nostalgic in the here,” she said when they sat down. “It reminds me of the nuclear bunkers they school used to let us have sleepovers in.” 

“Do they… not anymore?” Seungmin asked. 

“Nah, its storage now. Stupid radioactive storage.” 

“Of course you used to have sleepovers in a bunker,” Tag laughed. “I’d like to say she’s a women of many secrets, but she’s really quite predictable,” he said into his glass, the drink poised before his lips. 

“Excuse you,” she gasped. “The first time we met I almost set you both on fire.” 

Tag’s face stayed neutral and Seungmin’s took on an affronted air. 

“Accidentally…” she defended, but it came out more sarcastic than anything else. 

“Face it, Jeong,” Tag continued. “You’re pretty boring.”

“I am not boring!” she frustratedly threw back. “I only were Prada, I only drink Insignia, and I only play Saint-Saens. I’m a freaking cultural icon.”

Seungmin stared at her a moment. “Literally none of that is true,” he said. 

“You just, not even ten minutes ago, wanted to break into Vuitton, and you’re currently drinking an Austrian Syrah,” Tag added. 

“You only play rock music,” Seungmin tacked on. 

“It’s like you two don’t even know me,” she sneered, looking off toward the ceiling in a melodramatic mock offense. 

“Anyways,” Seungmin drawled out in a long exhale. “You want to break into an old Nazi cave based on a rumour told to you by a creepy criminal contact?”

Sujeong tuned back to them with a wide smile and nodded so fervently the dangling emerald earrings framing her face bounced with her head. 

Tag shrugged, setting his drink on the table. “I like Goya.” 

“They have a Goya!” Sujeong excitedly chirped in affirmation. 

“They might have a Goya,” Seungmin corrected, placing his chin onto the backs of his intertwined fingers, elbow staunchly bolstering them aloft from the table. 

“If you don’t believe me, then why did you even come?” she asked. 

“Germany is nice in the winter. It’s very… romantic,” he said. “And no before you start I mean crazy unbridled horse romantic.” 

“Ha!” Tag chuckled out. “You made a Napoleon reference.” 

Seungmin glared at him. 

“It’s funny,” the boy grinned. “Because you’re short,” he related to the other, smile getting wider. 

“So the cave,” Seungmin cut him off with a monotone voice. “Where’s the cave?” 

Sujeong clapped eagerly. “I finally get to take a Goya! This is like my dream.” 

She garnered the attention of a table beside them, three women and a man glancing over at the outburst, significantly louder than the steady drivel of the other patrons. 

“She means to… the bank . Take her Goya… to the bank.”

They turned away from Tag and started to converse again softer, glancing at them ever so often as they whispered, hunched over the table towards each other. 

Seungmin leaned into his ear. “They don’t speak English. She was just loud.” 

Tag stuck his tongue out at him and poured the rest of his drink down his throat before slamming onto the table. 

“Wait,” Seungmin began to think about Sujeong’s earlier words. “If someone knows where all this art is, then why didn’t they take it?” 

“They’re more a sculpture person,” she answered. 

“Ugh,” Seungmin groaned. “Do you even realize how sketchy that is?” 

“God, you’re such a goody-two-shoes,” Tag mocked under his breath. 

Seungmin was just about to chide the other when Sujeong dropped her forehead flat on the table, the glasses clinking as she made impact. “I thought you two were doing better,” she grumbled. 

“We are,” Seungmin insisted. 

“Yeah,” Tag agreed. “I mean he stabbed me, but other than that.” 

Sujeong’s head whipped up. “WHAT?!” 

“It was an accident,” Seungmin grit out at Tag. 

Sujeong’s eyebrow lifted up in a disbelieving quirk. “My kind of accident or an actual accident?”

“An actual accident,” Tag acquiesced. “Not that I bet he didn’t want to.” 

“Oh my god,” Seungmin groaned, eyes flying to the ceiling in annoyance as he leaned back into his chair, palms flat on the table. “Get over it.” 

“I did,” Tag shot back. “After seven stitches and a whole slew of pain meds.” 

“What no rehab for your mortal wound?” 

Sujeong waved the bartender over as the two argued and had her glass refilled which she downed in a matter of seconds despite the woman’s judging gaze and motioned for her to fill again. The woman did so and then just slowly placed the half-full bottle on the table beside Sujeong and left. She would have been offended if not for the convenience. 

Trudging through a damp forest in the middle of the winter, the sun having left her in the presence of a waxing crescent moon which seemed indifferent to her struggles, Sujeong wished she had asked for another bottle to go. Not that she really needed it but perhaps it would have made better company than the bickering first years she had both grown attached to and relied on to fulfil her thieving compulsions. She liked to call it chaotic hedonism. Except for right now, except for the cold dark woods. That was not hedonistic at all. Teeth chattering in the wind and tripping over the undergrowth was absolutely not at all what she had in mind when she begun planning the heists. But, there was a cave. Sure as she shivered in her coat, there was a crumbling cave tucked into a hill in the middle of nowhere just outside Salzburg. 

Tag lumbered in first, poised with a flashlight and a small hatchet had had pawned off some poor farmer by the roadside. He did barter his Rolex so she knows who got the better end of that deal. Although, maybe not, as Seungmin pointed out a couple of lost masterpieces might sell for more than an ostentatious watch, which he did make sure to say was ostentatious loudly, multiple times, in front of Tag. Seungmin himself had a small crow bar, which he actually bought the boy might add, and Sujeong herself had a map: a faded, hand-drawn, chicken scratch map hastily formed on the back of a brochure. 

“Do you think the cave will be warmer?” she asked Seungmin as they approached the mouth of the opening. 

“You really need to dress more weather appropriate.” 

“Or maybe the weather needs to cut me some slack.” 

“You are so self-aggrandized,” he rolled his eyes at her. “Is the scarf not helping?” he added after a moment. 

“No, no. It’s fine. It’s helping,” she murmured, hand now poised on the rock to duck her head through the short threshold and into the tunnel beyond. “Thank you,” she said to Tag who took her hand as she climbed in. 

Seungmin followed, no helping hand from Tag, and was handed the other’s flashlight in exchange for the crowbar. They paced no more than 200 yards down the dripping, whistling tunnel until they founded a boarded up wall from floor to ceiling seemingly covering a branch to the side. 

They boys turned to her in question and she shrugged. “What else would it be?” she offered, which was enough permission and agreement to send Tag forward to remove the obstacle from their path. 

“This feels like a déjà vu,” Seungmin mused as Tag hacked the hatchet into the wood. 

Sujeong bristled at the comment. “What have you been up to?” 

“That’s not what I meant. It’s like-” he was cut off by Tag thrusting the hatchet into his arms and drawing the crowbar from his grasp. 

The wood splintered and cracked beneath the crowbar as the moon faded in through the mouth of the cave. Seungmin and Sujeong stood back as Tag wretched the panels away, rotted and weak, throwing them to the dirt floor beneath where they roused dust that hadn’t seen society in many, many years. Tag peeled the last panel back with a grunt and discarded it, leaving a small opening into the darkness. He turned around, a bead of sweat having formed on his temple and took the flashlight from Seungmin. 

“Well,” he gestured into the abyss. “Let’s hope they didn’t rig it.”


	16. HEIST IV: Recovered Navz Cave near Salzburg, Germany

Sujeong’s jaw dropped and she pushed the boy through the while in the wood, sending him sprawling out on the ground on the other side. “WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?!” she screamed at him. “You ruined it!” 

“Does it not seem likely that they would have set traps?” he defended. “Booby traps? Land mines?” 

Tag sat up from the dirt, elbow propping his chest up, body bent at the waist where he lay. It almost seemed like he disappeared into the darkened corridor, fading out from them where he slumped on the earthen floor of the cave. 

“I could be dead right now,” he said. 

“You’re fine,” Seungmin droned, head popping up beside Sujeong’s in the whole, light pouring through, tumbling after his words as the torch made the trip with him. 

Tag threw his arm up to block the sudden onslaught of light, squinting into the beam and letting his chest flop back down with a huff, a plume of stale dust erupting and mingling in the air around his hair. It smelled of gun smoke and old lead and the decaying backs to a restored portrait, all metallic paint and disgustingly sticky oil. He smacked his tongue at the taste, at the litany of familiar, placeable palates because he was, of course, in the running to single handedly make himself a bio-chemical prodigy. Or he would if he hadn’t barely passed his final whilst he shrugged off the haunting laughter of a certain Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle who lay somewhere, in a grave in Paris, mocking him for the entire two hour ordeal. 

“All I wanted,” Sujeong chastised him as she passed through into the previously sectioned off branch of the tunnel. “Was to get a Goya. I’ve always wanted a Goya,” she tacked on wistfully. “I just- he gets me.”

“There’s no way that man was not haunted by demons,” Tag mumbled up from the floor of the cave. 

Seungmin came through next, choosing to shine his little beam of light directly onto Tag’s unsuspecting face as he passed, the boys gingerly closed eyelids scrunching up at the barrage of uncomfortable luminosity. 

Tag lay there, perhaps pouting although he might possibly never admit to it, and listened to two pairs of feet crunch through the dust further into the cave. He heard them gradually diminishing, their footfalls weakening as their distance increased and breathed out slowly. He waited a moment, in the silence, in the dark, alone. He waited for them to come running back to him and, no, not apologize – never apologize because he didn’t deserve it - but at least to come back and… 

He sprang up from the ground and took off after them. “Okay, wait no. I was actually serious about the-”

And there they were, frozen stiff, in the middle of a large room, a land mine firmly under Sujeong’s foot, peeking up on the left side of her right foot, firmly in her instep. 

“Are you serious?” 

The unamused glares he received from both of them answered his question. 

“Okay, uh, okay,” he grappled with the situation hands clasped behind his head in a vice and all by wheezing out the anxiety in which rested in the pit of his stomach. “Okay, okay, okay.” 

“Tag!” Seungmin yelled, the other boy’s deer in the headlights expressions immediately whipping around to him. 

Seungmin had never seen him look that scared, or scared at all… except for Amsterdam. He didn’t know Tag could feel. That he wasn’t some pompous asshole with a blisteringly clean smirk and a long legs which propelled him up all the stairs Seungmin had always had to climb. That he wasn’t some selfish airhead and that he too was capable of feeling any sort of human emotion, least of all a terrifyingly grounded empathy. And he bore it right now, Tag, he bore a shocked realization of compassion, an aggressively frightened understanding. He cared. 

“Yeah?” the boy’s words came out strangled and afraid. 

“I need you to help us right now.” 

“Uhhh…”

“It knows we’re here,” Seungmin said quietly, Sujeong’s shaking hand clapped over her mouth in a silencing tourniquet. “We can’t move until we disarm it…” Tag nodded his head in understanding, “but we can’t disarm it from here,” he explained to the other boy.

Tag shook his head back and forth so fast that Seungmin was afraid the other might get whiplash. 

“No, it’s okay,” Seungmin’s coaxing voice drifted over. “You can do it. I know you can. You’re so smart, Tag. You’re so fucking smart.”

“Nope. No, I’m not,” his lip started to quiver and he continued to shake his head. “I’m not and you’re gonna die because I’m stupid and I’m sorry and it’s my fault and-”

“Youngtaek.” 

Tag lifted his frenzied eyes to meet Seungmin’s calm gaze and swallowed. 

“I know what I said before,” Seungmin deliberately got out, the words carefully placed into the air like they would break the second they left his mouth. “And I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong.” 

Tag smiled a sad, fretful smile at him. “You’re only saying that because you’re standing on an active landmine, aren’t you?” 

Seungmin released a shaky laugh. “I’m not on the landmine,” he amended. 

Tag gathered all his courage in his chest and nodded definitively at his ex-roommate. “Okay, I can do it.” 

He paced back and forth for a second and then motioned for Seungmin to throw him the flashlight which the other quickly complied with, Sujeong’s eyes following its arch as they tossed it between them. Tag studied the small black box, what he could see of it. 

“Okay, so I’m going to assume it’s RDX,” he told them. “Which means there’s no way it’s not active anymore. And it probably has a Lead Azide trigger,” he continued. “But that doesn’t do us any good because it’s not really humid down here.” 

Sujeong groaned and Tag looked up anxiously to find Seungmin giving him an encouraging nod. 

“I can uh,” Tag took the crowbar in his hand and tried to reach across as much open ground as possible. “I can see if the detonator spring degraded at all. That’s honestly out best bet. But…” 

“But what?” Sujeong squeaked out. 

“But it might not have.” 

“How do we know?” Seungmin asked and Tag shifted his view from one frozen figure to the other. 

“We don’t.” 

Seungmin bit his lip. “Do it.” 

“What?” 

“Do it. Flip it,” he said. “Let’s see if it degraded.” 

“NO, I’M NOT GOING TO FLIP IT!” Tag erupted, his voice booming off the walls. “ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY!” 

Seungmin’s eyes widened. “I THOUGHT THAT’S WHAT THAT MEANT?!” 

“NO!!!” this came from Sujeong which had both boys jumping in their skins. 

“Why are you yelling?” Tag yelled at her. 

“Because I don’t want to die!” 

“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO DIE!” Tag screamed and then all three of them feel into silence. 

“Oh my god,” Tag whispered in realization. “It’s not RDX.” 

“What?” 

“It’s WWII,” he told Seungmin. “It’s not RDX. It’s probably a Schu-mine 42. It’s a fucking ZZ-42 type detonator.” 

“Is that good or bad?” Sujeong asked. 

Tag slowly drew out the hatchet he had placed through his loose belt slung about his waist. “Don’t freak out.” 

“Don’t freak out? You have a hatchet! What do you mean don’t freak out?” the girl started to spiral. 

“I want you,” Tag explained slowly, “both of you, to jump over to me when I tell you to, okay?” 

“I thought the point was not to move?!” Sujeong screamed at him. 

“Jeong,” Seungmin cut in calmly. “Listen to him. He’s a smart kid.” 

She nodded and Tag raised his arm, bent at the elbow, hatchet raised into the air. And threw it directly at the box, yelling at them once the hilt had only just left his hand to move. Sujeong’s feet released their pressure from the box just as the hatched lodged itself into the top of the box, and it sparked slightly before fizzling out in a tiny, sputtered flame. Seungmin and Sujeong, now collapsed into the dirt by Tag’s feet anxiously peered up at the noise. They waited a moment in the still space before re-trapping some breath into their lungs. 

“I hate Germany,” Sujeong muttered, clung between the two boys as the continued, Tag’s arm crushed under her grip and Seungmin’s hand no longer his to claim. 

And the tunnel opened, widening into a room of lofty heights and racks upon racks of gold and wood and boxes and tarps: a treasure trove of stolen prized possessions and sentimental memories. Seungmin grabbed two other flashlights he had been preserving the batteries of, and handed one to Tag, gently placing the other in Sujeong’s hand as he peeled his own away from her grasp. Praying to all the gods she didn’t believe in, Sujeong fell to her knees, tears in her eyes and released the most sensitively charged exhale she had ever had in her life. 

“Oh my god,” Sujeong choked out through the thick emotion sticking in her throat, as she stared before her. 

“Jeong, it’s okay,” Tag cut in, reaching his hand out to her shoulder. “It’s-”

The girl’s hand came to rest on top of his, the sensation of the touch halting Tag’s next words as he peeked down at her. “They have two Goyas,” she sobbed out, hand rising to clutch at her heart through her coat. 

“Want the frames?” Seungmin asked, stalking over to them. 

“Wait, can I just… look at them for a while.” 

He smiled back at her softly. “Do whatever you want, Jeong. You’ve been through a lot today.” 

“Thanks,” she croaked out, eyes stitched to the two lost Black Paintings propped on the shelf in front of them, the roughly cut plaster of a wall thrown into an extravagant frame. 

The soft yellows and blues of a picture on the left most shelf stuck under a stalactite overhang and flanked in disgustingly moist flowstone caught Tag’s attention. “Oh, another Van Gogh,” he casually threw out until he noticed what is was. 

The Painter on The Road to Tarascon by Vincent Van Gogh, alternatively entitled Painter on His Way to Work, was a self-portrait: one of six. Tag admired that about the man. He detested artistic vanity - like Reubens, but that was a different story. The painter had never made it to Tarascon, instead ending up in Magdeburg during the second world war and toted into safety after a particularly nasty Allied bombing. Everyone thought the poor man had ended up in Stassfurt, burned to a crisp, his empty workroom waiting forever for him to never return. But, well, clearly he sought a little clandestine sightseeing elsewhere. 

“I can’t believe it,” Tag breathed out. “It’s the lost painter.” 

A crash from the corner distracted his moment and he turned to find Sujeong, still on the floor, clutching one of the Goya’s in her arms: a considerably impressive feat given the sheer cumbersome size and inevitable accompanying weight of the frame in which it sat. She cried onto the frame, quickly wiping it away with the sleeve of her coat and then tugging it impossibly tighter into her chest, laying her rosy cheek along its top. 

“She’s had a rough week,” Seungmin whispered to Tag. 

The boy startled and realized he had been joined in front of the missing self-portrait. “Yeah, apparently.” 

“Listen, about before-” Seungmin tried to say. 

“No worries,” Tag interrupted him. “We’re good.” 

The shorter raised an eyebrow. 

“I’m serious,” Tag insisted. “We’re good,” he added with a gentle smile. 

“We’re good,” Seungmin confidently repeated, a smile of his own popping up. 

“1945,” Tag said. 

“What?”

“The last time anyone ever saw this…” Tag trailed off. “Or the last time they thought anyone ever saw it.” 

Sujeong showed up beside them hugging the Goya, although more aptly she had lumbered over awkwardly attempting to drag it next to her. She sniffled into the air; knuckles clutched white over the frame. 

“Can someone grab the other one for me?” she asked. 

They filed out, Sujeong and Tag each hefting a large Goya through the stacks, Tag pausing to push the loitering memorabilia off the shelves and onto the floor where he would step on it for good measure. Seungmin carried Van Gogh in his arms, the painter toughly 19 by 17 inches, securely tucked under his right armpit. They had almost passed through the last column when Seungmin stopped. Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man sat in front of them, larger than the missing Van Gogh but considerably smaller than the two unknown Goyas they lugged. 

Tag scrunched up his nose. “I don’t even like this one.” 

“I don’t know,” Seungmin mused. “It has a certain… je ne sais quoi.”

Sujeong hummed at that and all three of them simultaneously tilted their heads to the side, studying it briefly. 

A grin stretched across Sujeong’s face. “He has a beret!” she chirped. 

So, of course, they had to take it, adding it to their looted bunch without hesitation. Because, after all, both boys lived to please the gregarious volatile girl… and, well, he had a beret. Sujeong’s pocket jingled as Tag helped her out of the cave entrance and into the early morning of the wood greeting them. He raised an eyebrow in question and watched her pull out a string of antique necklaces. 

“And where are these going?” he asked. 

“Lasserstraße 8,” she said. “I’m not a horrible person.”


	17. The Roa Blunder

“Can someone pass me that stack of papers?” Nayoung asked from the floor, two pencils holding her hair up and laptop perched before her amidst a scatter of documents and scribbles. 

She was nestled at the foot of her bed which housed an exhaustedly napping Kuhn. The poor kid had drunk more caffeine than was humanly possible the night before in an effort to fend off sleep as he scrambled to submit his dissertation outline by the deadline imposed by the economics department. They were all pretty sure he might have injected himself at one point in a desperate moment when he felt an unsanctioned yawn creeping up his throat. Y looked at the sleeping boy, feeling lucky that the medical professor were a bit more loose with their time schedules, and then to Roa, bent over her own desk with noise cancelling headphones and a pen between her teeth as she combed through a cloned email. 

“You mean me, don’t you?” he asked Nayoung. 

He grunted from where he hung off of Roa’s bed, head nearly an inch above the floor and back curved over the fold of the bed following the comforter over the edge. He turned his head and back forth looking at the carpet for Nayoung’s papers and stretched his arm out, spine pinching at the position as his fingers brushed against the side of the stack, pushing it further away from him. It sat in the middle of the carpet for a moment, both of them simply staring at it. 

“Roa…” he called out to the girl seated at her desk, swiping through her phone. “Roa, Roa, Roa,” he kept chiming until she popped off her headphones. “Can you pass Im the paper?” 

She turned to find him precariously balanced like a teeter-totter on her bed, arms flailing and flapping around the floor, smacking it no more than five centimeters from the binder clip of research but not quite making it there from his current arrangement of limbs. 

The girl knit her eyebrows. “Get up?” 

“No,” he groaned. “You get up.”

“Me?! Why would I get up?”

“Because I’m your friend and you love me?” he tried. 

“You made me a biohazard before Christmas break,” she grit out at him with narrowed eyes. “Why on earth would I still love you?” 

“It’s not that bad,” he waved her off. “Look at all the work you’re getting done. I mean your dissertation is practically all planned out by now.”   
Roa did not dignify him with a response. 

“I was supposed to go to Gstaad,” Nayoung deadpanned, looking up at him and joining the agitated glare her roommate was already giving him. 

“Im, come on,” he sighed. “You’ve been there like ten times already. You’re not missing out on anything. It’s snow and champagne and German. Besides,” he continued. “I technically only poisoned Kuhn. You both walked in on your own volition.” 

“My own-” she scoffed in disbelief. “Are you kidding me?! I was going to get a fucking coffee at 7 in the goddamn morning before I went to my advisor meeting!” Nayoung yelled. “We both were!”

Kuhn flinched in Nayoung’s bed at the girl’s voice and his eyes fluttered open a crack, although not daring to fully awaken quite yet. Y wasn’t sure he physically could. 

“I didn’t think I’d be breathing in your stupid new synthesized drug!” she stuck her tongue out at him. 

“The word ‘drug’ gets such a bad rap,” the boy mused, all the blood rushing to his head giving him a pounding headache but refusing to move. “I prefer to call it ‘fun time powder’,” he said throwing up air quotes around the name. “Better marketing.” 

“What time is it?” Kuhn asked, from beneath the covers. 

“Does it matter?” Nayoung asked. 

“No. I guess not,” he mumbled back sleepily and closed his eyes again, relaxing into her many, many pillows. 

“You know,” Y mused. “They say people that have a lot of pillows are lonely.” 

Nayoung crawled over to the head of her bed, wrenched one out right from beneath Kuhn’s head, the boy yelping in protest, and threw it directly into Y’s face. The boy floundered about, trying to catch it in his upended state, ultimately failing and crashing to the floor with it with a thud. He rolled over onto his back with a moan and blinked up at her. 

“I deserved that.” 

“You deserve a heck of a lot more for what you did,” Nayoung shot at him. 

Kuhn’s head popped up from the cushion of the mattress. “Guys, cut him a break. I think he inhaled too much Hexamine third year and lost all his brain cells.” 

“What’s Hexamine?” Roa asked, tipping her chair back from the desk, single bare foot propped on the surface to push herself back in a leisurely sway, the pen having left her mouth to be twirled around her fingers. 

“Just formaldehyde and ammonia,” the boy yawned out. 

“Why do you know that?” Y turned to his friend. 

“I invest in pharmaceuticals,” Kuhn answered, face smushed into Nayoung’s pillow like he wished to marry it. “I’m not a one trick pony.” 

“Is that a reference to the Saint Tropez thing because if so I will kill you,” Roa immediately threatened him, slamming her four chair legs onto the ground. 

Khun snickered into the bed. “Of course, it’s a reference to Saint Tropez.” 

“If Y’s stupid research doesn’t kill you, I’m going to,” she growled. 

“Guys, stop. Please,” Y half-heartedly implored them, staring at the ceiling from his position starfished half on the floorboards, half on the carpet. 

Nayoung started to protest to the growing tension between a happy-go-lucky Kuhn, boundaries eroded from his sleep ridden state, and a murderous Roa, which… well, Roa was always murderous. Nayoung thought the girl could have run for ASN chair had Mijoo not led the Assassination Nation for her two seniors years. However, before Nayoung could get any words out, her hair whipped into her face as the window opened and the freezing, icy breeze of winter blew in. Kuhn jackknifed up in bed at the sensation and locked eyes with a unkempt Jangjun, a rope curled around his body and a rose clutched in his mouth, the head wilting slightly as if it were to fall off at any moment and commit suicide. 

“NO!” Roa screamed in horror as the boy flew in through the now open window and his body slammed into the floor underneath the sill. 

“WHAT ARE DOING?!” Y joined, eyes wide, reaching out his hands in an equally defensive and hostile gesture. 

“GET OUT!” Roa yelled again. 

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Nayoung’s voice came into the chorus.

“Where the HELL did you come from?!” Kuhn snapped at the second year on the floor. 

“What are you even still doing on campus?! Why the hell are you here? Where the fuck is your sister?” Y interrogated him. “It’s Christmas eve! You shouldn't be here!”   
Jangjun sighed and jumped up onto his feet, four pairs of eyes stuck to him. 

“Well, hello to you too,” he mockingly offered them. 

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!” Nayoung screamed. 

“Funny you would ask that,” he answered with an awkward laugh. “I came to apologize to Roa… about the whole match thing in the cafeteria the other day.” 

“Get lost!” Roa called back. 

“It did not go as planned. I can tell you that much. I very much did not intend to insult you, or embarrass you, or possibly cripple you,” he listed off, eyes looking into the distance as he tried to recall the entire laundry list, cringing at the last one. “Yeah, entirely not the last one.” 

Roa wordlessly threw up her left hand from the desk, bright red cast spanning from the middle of her palm, swaddling her thumb, to her mid forearm. 

“And to check up on my dear friend, Im, whom I haven’t seen in while,” Jangjun continued, sending the other girl a cheesy wink which she scoffed at, rolling her eyes. 

“And also Y owes me money,” the boy finished. 

Y reeled back. “I owe you money?!” 

“Did I get that the other way around?”

Kuhn swung his legs around and placed them onto the floor. “You do realize you have to quarantine with us know right?” he asked the second year. 

Jangjun faced dropped into a confused pout. “Why?” 

“Roa, your boyfriend is an idiot,” Nayoung threw at her roommate. 

Roa griped her jaw tight and trapped Jangjun’s eyes into a glare which he desperately attempted avoid by glancing everywhere about the room save for her face and failing due to the pure force of radiating contempt she shot at him. “I hate you,” she mouthed at the younger, the whisper of the words tumbling out as she overenunciated them. 

“At least you don’t hate me anymore,” Y chimed. 

“Wrong,” she spat at him. “I hate everyone.” 

“Why would I have to quarantine?” Jangjun asked, slightly more anxious now, gaze flitting between each of the oblivious fourth years. 

“Hey,” Nayoung interrupted her increasingly vexed roommate. “I have a question” 

Kuhn acknowledged her with an ambivalent, “Shoot.” 

“If we, just sort of…” she pointed at Jangjun and then at the window with a quirk of her brow and mimed a shoving motion to which the younger boy was gasping in offended shock. 

Kuhn nodded along at her with a thoughtful expression, genuinely deliberating her proposal. 

“Can I do it?” Roa asked. “Can I push him out of the window?”

“No!” Y yelled. 

“Thank you!” Jangjun mimicked in relief. 

“I meant because of the drug,” Y explained. “I’d normally be all for pushing you out the window, if you didn’t just idiotically expose yourself to my dissertation.”

Jangjun stared at him. 

“No offense,” Y tacked on the end like it helped. 

“Wait what? You exposed me to your research? What’s going to happen?” the younger asked. “Is it bad?” he softly squeaked out at the end. 

“Only the first seven hours,” Roa smirked at him. 

“It probably won’t be as bad,” Kuhn offered. “Or maybe it’ll be worse,” he added with a shrug. “I don’t know. I’m not a med student.” 

“You know,” Y said, standing up to place a comforting hand on the second year’s shoulder. “You don’t really have to stay because the school didn’t catch you yet. I mean,” he coaxed, “if you jumping right back out the window now, no one’s the wiser.” 

Jangjun immediately blew a kiss to Roa who somehow turned into a deeper set of rage and vaulted himself through the window, rope still secured around his chest like a sash and in no way useful to his current predicament as he blundered down the side of the dorm, feet scuffing and palms peeling and grunted noises of surprise followed by a thud. 

Kuhn turned to Roa. "What floor do you live on?" 

She smiled and held up four fingers. 

“Are you not going to tell him that the school only kept us for monitoring and that indirect contact doesn’t count?” Nayoung asked Y, reaching over to slam the window closed at the chill, the ice on the sill cracking as it slammed closed once more. 

The boy threw back his head and laughed. “No.”


	18. HEIST V: Musée des Beaux Artes in Montreal, Canada

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can you fall in love with a car???

Tag tapped his foot against the peddle along to the beat of some old rock song or other that could have been Hendrix or could have been Led Zeppelin or maybe even Nirvana. He wasn’t sure. His head tipped back onto the soft, white leather of the driver’s seat, nodding along in tiny bobs in the guitar and the drums and the raspy, hazy voice blasting over his speakers. Tag had the car replaced with a boosted stereo his third year of high school and the whole dashboard was a temporal leap frog from the 1966 display to the 1950s speedometer jerry-rigged in from a Cisitalia Grand Prix copycat model of the 360 to the modern music system which had been the privileged impulsion of a fever dream he had in his youth of becoming a racecar driver: this particular design he dreamed up being the ironic performance humour of a supercharged engine which was never allowed to race and yet remained an unbattled hero. 

He had parked his precious treasure of a cherry red 1966 Porsche 356 in front of Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport, tires settled into a low snow drift that the city maintenance had fought tooth and nail to keep at a reasonable height. He watched as families departed outside the glass walls, hugging and cheering as children ran to their grandparents for one last hug amidst piles upon piles of overly stuffed luggage. A group of young women filed out of the airport with tinsel like headbands bearing the new year and skirts entirely too short for the mid-winter weather. He raised his rounded Ray-bans up into the gentle curling tangle of his hair and watched them with a smile. One of them stopped to point at his car and take a picture, the boy obliging and sending a suave salute through the glass which had them fawning and trampling away into the snow. 

Sujeong walked through the doors next, furry crème Tecnica après-ski boots adorning her feet and a light brown shearling bomber jacket zipped tight against the Canadian chill. She totted a needlepoint duffel over her shoulder, a hunting scene by the looks of it which Tag thought appropriate. She spotted his car immediately and stopped to wave her fingers at the boy who laughed at the embarrassing gesture. 

“God,” she droned, plopping into the seat beside him and pulling the door closed with a huff, numerous Hermès bangles clinking together in a frenzy of gold lined luxury. “I was so fucking bored.” 

“You were home for like a week,” Tag reminded her, turning down the music slightly. 

She lolled her head over to him where it rested against the head rest. “10 days,” she corrected as he pulled away from the airport, hand firmly wrapped around the stick, signet bulging out on his pinky. 

“Seungmin’s at the condo,” Tag told her. 

She hummed in response. “I like your car.” 

“Thanks,” he beamed. “Had it shipped out after Christmas this year. I got too sad leaving it all alone in the other house.” 

“What about your other car,” she laughed. 

“My Benz W113?”

Sujeong blinked at him and then finally threw the duffel which had been resting her lap behind them into the hint of a backseat. “I don’t know what that means,” she admitted. 

“It’s 1970s,” he said, merging into the light traffic on the Autoroute 20. 

“Again. I don’t know what that means.” 

“My mom said she’d watch it for me,” he mused. “She says ‘hi’ by the way.” 

“I like your mom,” Sujeong yawned. “She’s nice.” 

“It’s only about a thirty minute drive, but you can sleep if you want,” Tag offered. 

“God, thank you,” she mumbled back, dropping head onto the window with a hollow thunk, the cold seeping through the window into her forehead. 

“No need to call me that,” he teased. 

She scowled and threw her arm out at him, smacking him on the shoulder with another chime of her bracelets audible in the booming whoever it was Tag had playing. 

“Hey, I’m driving!” he chided her, but the smirk was enough to have her laughing and dropping her head back down. 

Roughly 20 minutes later, considering Tag absolutely took advantage of his vehicle’s engine, they arrived. Tag grabbed Sujeong’s bag and tossed his keys to a valet man, leading her up a stark white marble split staircase. He nodding to a concierge man stationed there before continuing to the elevators. 

“Isn’t it a little too close to home?” she asked once the doors had closed. 

“No,” he snorted. “I went like a week ago and they had a bunch of shit openly exhibited without any protective cases like idiots. Good shit too,” he said watching the numbers fly by above their heads. “Like Roman shit.” 

A large apartment awaited them with an entire wall of windows stretching its length faced the park with such streams of sunlight pouring in it needed none of the many ornate lamps scattered about on coffee tables and sideboards or even the giant twinkling chandelier suspended above the larger of the two dining tables. They passed into a small completely black library, shelves stacked with books so frayed and aged she couldn’t read the spines. Seungmin sat sipping coffee in a giant wingback, book in hand. Sujeong smiled and plopped herself down on the arm of the chair, leaning over to read the words. 

“Van Winkle?” she asked. 

“Irving,” Seungmin answered. 

“Oh,” she made a noise of acknowledgment as she processed it. “I thought it said Van Dyck at first for some reason.” 

“Van Dick Winkles,” Tag added with a brief laugh and then promptly left the two alone in the library. 

“Hey!” Seungmin called out after him. “You shouldn’t be making unsavory jokes when there’s a church in here!” 

Tag’s head popped back around the corner and grinned at them unabashedly. 

“There’s a fucking church in your building?” Sujeong balked. 

“Yeah,” he nonchalantly responded. “Where else would Lortie play for the annual Christmas concert?” 

“Of course, you know Lortie,” Seungmin mumbled. 

Tag laughed again, a rolling chuckle which shook his shoulders. “I got some stuff to do,” he said with a wave. “Have fun. We leave at 10:47, mes petits voleurs!” he chirped, disappearing once again. 

At 10:46 Tag met them downstairs in yet another car, a sleek black town car he looked equally as comfortable in. 

“What happened to the Porsche?” Seungmin asked, climbing into the passenger side. 

“Parked downtown,” he answered. “On the off chance someone decides to question me, I rented out the back courtyard at Gibbys and filled it with thirty of my most devious and loyal acquaintances complete with a devilishly handsome young man, an editorially clad young lady,” he said winking at Sujeong, “And a midget.” 

Sujeong slid into the back. “We’ve never needed one before.” 

“Like you said,” Tag responded, placing his hand on the back of Seungmin’s chair to steady himself as he peered over his shoulder at her. “It’s a little close to home. Can’t be too careful.” 

“Is it really a midget?” Seungmin grumbled from beside the boy. 

Tag turned to him with a dangerous smirk, pulling his off and placing it on the wheel. “Legally or…?” 

Seungmin refused to answer, crossing his arms and shrinking down into his seat. 

It took Tag 10 minutes to drive through the abandoned winding paths which diced the Mount Royal Park, the grove of trees giving way to more sparse vegetation as they rose up hills and real situating itself as they rolled back down again. The snow was high, causing the wheels to find ruts of travel and swerve slightly on its own mind as it weaved through the greenspace. Why Tag had decided the easiest route of travel to commit a grand white collar crime not ten minutes from his second home was through a fucking park, the other did not know. But hey, he had called them the day after Christmas, begging with all his might, for them to come participate in their favorite extracurricular activity and they had been bored enough to say yes. 

“I’m thinking Rembrandt,” Tag told them as he pulled the car between the cover of a particular dense mess of foliage. “I’m also thinking de Heem and some antique shit. Thoughts?” 

“Define antique shit,” Sujeong pressed. 

“Old. Expensive,” Tag rattled off. “I don’t know, broken?” 

Seungmin peeked over at her with a look that said, ‘what did you expect’ and climbed out of the car. 

Tag had done his reconnaissance: seven years of it ever since his family moved into the building across the park and he spent lazy Sunday morning waltzing through the exhibits. It was a bit of a nostalgic spin for the first year, facing the Musée des Beaux Artes de Montreal. But, every child has a dream. And further, regardless of what exactly that dream was and perhaps more the Genius mentality, every child had impulses. 

They started from the roof for a change, ropes and hooks, sliding down the slick glass slope at the front and carefully removing a window panel where it met the structure of the main museum. Tag’s pulse device, attached to the glass beside it, had tripped any sort of wiring that was associated with the panel and they slid inside, dropping onto the floorboards. There were barely any obstacles due to Seungmin’s five hours of coding which had replaced the angled camera’s recordings with Tag’s expertly crafted footage of the museum from two days before, late afternoon light pulled down to an evening shadow. After Germany, it felt too easy. After Amsterdam, it felt too easy. Or, maybe they were simply getting better. 

Guards were another story; they didn’t want a repeat of the Van Gogh. Jangjun’s remark on her departmental focus rung through Sujeong’s head, but she’d be damned if she weren’t just as crafty as those clandestine kids. After all, propaganda was a subtle art. But for some godforsaken reason Tag had decided passing through the entirely of Desmarais not once but three fucking times was a good idea. The Rembrandt sketch and the de Heem were nestled in the back of the Pavilion for Peace and of course the antiquities had to be accessed via an underground passage beneath Sherbrooke Street and then passing through the Hornstein to enter Stewart. ‘Lofty ambitions, Tag,’ she thought, ‘lofty ambitions’. 

It was royally difficult getting up two different flights of stairs to nick the Rembrandt sketch of a landscape with cottages and the de Heem’s still life Vanitas. The boys sent Sujeong up entirely on her own the fetch the latter watching with held breathes as she flung herself up on the railings, deciding to skip the patrolled steps altogether and dangling herself over the two story drop. Apparently, the girl had dabbled in gymnastics. 

Traversing the entirety of the main structure again, slowly but surely passing foot by foot through the building to the tunnels, took slightly longer than Tag had presumed but not enough to quell the boy’s boundless energy, his figure practically vibrating in excitement as they neared the end of the underground passage. There was a strange sensation they shared between them, catching each other’s eyes in the empty, soulless stretch of the tunnel that resonated with an ambiguous disassociation and a heightened awareness of the scene surrounding them. And then, of course, the antiquities: a 1st century C.E. Roman Marble Head of an Egyptian like king in a statue of light taupe - which sat, as Tag had detailed, completely unprotected - and a 5th century B.C.E. Achaemenid sandstone relief that resembled a gold tablet. 

“This looks old,” Tag mumbled, tossing the tablet into the air and catching it as one would a baseball. “And expensive.”

“Then why are you throwing it?” Sujeong groaned as Seungmin bagged the other into a black shoulder slung backpack.

“It’s mine anyways,” Tag shrugged. “I should be allowed to do what I want with it.” 

“Dear lord,” the girl breathed to no one. “He’s going to make it a paperweight.” 

“Did you know,” Tag mused, leaning onto the pedestal like a model at a vaguely themes photoshoot. “That these two babies alone add up to a mil and a quarter.” 

“Don’t tell us how much they cost,” Seungmin cut him off, zipping the bag. “It’s just tacky. You should know better.” 

They stood that night, after all was said and done, on the balcony looking out at the Museum across the park, sitting silent in the night, unaware. Tag had a bottle of Chandon waiting in an ice bucket and a roaring fire to warm them. The first firework of the night kissed the sky and exploded with a boom to which Tag screamed out over the treetops, “Happy New Year!” letting the frothy champagne bubble pour over his hand as the cork flew into the street. 

Here’s the thing: things are never magically better. They don’t heal and fix themselves for the fun it, for no reason at all. Sometimes they stay broken just because they can, reveling in the shattered and smashed pieces. And it’s hard… to learn to forgive when you’ve never been asked to before, when you’ve never had to or even thought of giving second chances. People didn’t forgive without prompting and they didn’t forget things which drove them mad, if only for a little bit and only for a little while. But there’s also a sense to it, to someone hating the parts of yourself that you hate too: a tacit, fragile comradery. As Tag looked at Seungmin in the spotlight from his balcony sconces, the dark empty expanse of a park playing backdrop to him, he thought it felt that like, like there knew something about each other, and really knew it. Apologies were a faulty system. Tag had said many things he didn’t mean in the moment he spoke them and sometimes never had at all. He was sure everyone else did too. It was a fault of being human. And maybe it wasn’t easy fixing broken things, saying a sorry that you truly meant or showing you were trying, trying above all else, to be better than you were before.

He smiled as the other boy lifted the glass to his lips with a laugh at something Sujeong had said. Yeah, maybe they knew each other well enough to finally understand what fixing things felt like, what it took. For the first time in his life, Tag felt uncomfortable at recognizing himself. But it was good, it was hopeful, and it was real.


	19. Networking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yay some googoos :))

If he could have written himself a note to find that morning before he work up, Jibeom would have listed a whole slew of things most of which centered on exactly how cold the goddamn Arctic Ocean was in the dredges of the winter. Not that he wouldn’t be here right now had he known, but still, a little mental preparation would have been nice. He startled at the suddenly audible growing sound of sloshing waves in a morning too early for sun, and spun around from the wall to see a zodiac emerging from the dark, misty expanse of ocean. His leg slid off the edge of the concrete lip and splashed into icy water. 

“Fuck!” he cursed, drawing it back out again a split second after it submerged. 

The boat stilled almost immediately as it approached, the metallic hum of the engine grew quieter and quieter until it was drowned out by the lapping water. 

“Are you a pledge?” a voice called out from the general direction of the boat, the high beam of a headlight erupting from the front of it and slamming into Jibeom’s face. 

He held up his hand to cover his now blinded eyes and stumbled into the water again, the edge of his wetsuit slipping easily into the waves below and his leg plunging further down this time. It was achingly cold, a jolt of sore pin-pricks dancing up his leg as soon as it touched the water and he was jerking back so violent he almost fell in again. Not that he couldn’t handle it, but he had docked his own boat at a paranoid distance away from the island and swum, however many yards, in the coldest fucking water of his life and he was not ready to get in again. 

“Are you a pledge?” the voiced asked again. 

“Yeah!” he yelled back, grimacing at the cold, at the boat, at the light. “Yeah, who are you?” he finally questioned. 

“I’m a pledge too!” the voice answered. 

They both seemed to wait there a moment, the light clicking off with a loud echo that bounced off the island’s retaining wall upon which he was perched. The boat drifted forward on the current slightly and the other kid, a boy now Jibeom thought, gingerly climbed onto the wall beside him, a grappling hook in tow. 

“So… hi?” the kid offered, sticking his hand out in greeting.  
“Hi?” Jibeom offered back, pulling off the glove of wetsuit and shaking the other’s clammy skin. 

The Factory had a tradition, an unofficial tradition, whereby every year the foremost recruits of the rising first year class took it upon themselves to issue a challenge of sneaking onto the most secretly guarded campus in the world. In all its time running only one kid made it on, maybe two. Jibeom wasn’t sure. Rumours were sticky and volatile and a dangerous currency at Genius. Maybe, no one had ever made it and the sole reigning champion, or two, were simply ghosts made up to keep them all motivated year after year of failure. He did, however, remembering hearing it might have been, had it actually happened, a girl. And Jibeom was no clandestine prodigy or anything but he thought making it to the island was enough to give himself a pat on the back, having watched some get taken down by the coast guard and other’s by patrolling Russian ships. He was almost certain that another had been following him in a similar boat only to have their engine quit. But, there was the kid before him who had somehow also made it to the island. 

“Jaehyun,” the kid said. 

“Jibeom.” 

“So, I know this is supposed to be an individual exercise and all,” the kid drawled, “but if we made it this far I don’t think they could really stop us from helping each other. What do you say? Partners?”

Jibeom studied the other boy. He was ridiculously pretty, but there something gentle about it. He looked like what every politician wanted their son to look like. Jaehyun appeared disarmingly trustworthy, like his motives, if ever ulterior, were buried so deep he might not even known them himself. Jibeom considered this; he considered the obviously diplomatically trained way in which the other smiled and the greeting devoid of hesitation, a bolstered conviction in his own competence lived and not learned. There was nothing so dangerous as overconfidence. But, Jaehyun had a point. 

“You know what,” Jibeom smiled at the boy. “Let’s do this.” 

At 5:03 in the morning, on January 12th, they scaled the Genius wall, being the first kinds in god knows how long - again they were uncertain about the statistics - to do so. It was unlikely one of them would make it that far, let alone two. But, as they heaved themselves over the cliff and collapsed into the grass with burning lungs and aching arms, a voice sounded out from the field stretching before them. 

“Oh, it’s you,” someone groaned and Jibeom swiveled his head to find none other than Kim Donghyun perched in the crumbling window of the old guard tower, feet dangling over the edge, flashlight in hand. 

“Didn’t think I’d make it this far?” he threw back, pretending to not be surprised by the other’s presence himself. 

“No,” Donghyun admitted. “I didn’t.” 

“You know each other?” Jaehyun asked from his side, still gasping for breath. 

Jibeom slipped into a bone chilling shake of violent shivers and began peeling the skin-tight wetsuit from his shoulders. 

“No,” the two boys responded at the same time. 

Jaehyun looked between them skeptically. “Okay…” 

“I don’t fraternize with… well, him,” Donghyun laughed, slipping down from atop the ruin and landing soundlessly in the grass. 

“How did you get on campus?” Jaehyun asked. 

“We’re not on campus yet,” Jibeom grumbled, pushing past Donghyun with his shoulder, smacking the other’s chest out of his path as he wandered toward the inner gate. 

The icy dew of dawn crystalized itself over the tall grasses spanning the island from the cliffs to the manicured field to the high brick walls and stone gate at the entrance. The wonderful thing was Jaehyun and Donghyun had both brought ropes for the express purpose of scaling the wall which never would have worked. And Jibeom felt like a god as he explained the invisible electric fence which sat atop the bulwark, armed and extremely uncomfortable to encounter. The kids on campus had long since developed a way around that for late night rendezvous and impromptu excursions of the impulse sort. 

“What do you mean we can’t climb it?” Jaehyun complained, holding the useless rope in his hands and staring at it as if it had been the architect of all his problems. “Are you serious? Do you have any idea what kind of time I’ve put into rock climbing?” 

“Well, look who’s good for something,” Donghyun drawled, sidling up to Jibeom and plucking an energy bar out of the other’s backpack. “What’s this?” 

Jibeom snatched it back with a pout. “I get hungry.” 

He led the two grumbling boys to a irregular pattern in the brick and pulled a knife out, to dig around the edges of the line, pocking into the wall with tiny jabs. He eventually found a space where the knife easily slipped in and dug out the grout enough to slip his fingers in. They latched around the end of the brick and he pulled, the wall giving way and popping a chunk out the size of a large dog. Jaehyun clapped him on the back with a smile and was the first to duck through it. Jibeom turned to Donghyun and raised an eyebrow, gesturing for the other to follow their new acquaintance. Donghyun repressed a sneer and silently nodded to Jibeom with a scowl, tucking himself through the passage as well. 

It wasn’t all that hard getting onto campus considering they did have three different plans and three different spheres of knowledge about the island and three different sets of hands to deal with all that arose. Maybe that had been the problem, the fatal flaw of all the year’s prior where kids were too selfishly self-aggrandized to ask one another for help, preferring glory or failure as long as they came on no one’s shoulders but their own. Or maybe people were just bad at it. Again, the numbers weren’t ever publicized. 

The three boys stalked up to the dining hall, hoping to mill in with a few earlier risers on their way to breakfast. It was clam and quiet, the students ignoring three new bodies and three new faces perched near the building’s doors either by intentional laziness considering the hour or mere apathy. Donghyun flinched at a recognizable laughed and ducked behind Jaehyun’s back as it grew louder. 

“What are you doing?” Jibeom laughed before his gaze followed and found Y walking toward them with a friend, casually talking to each together and oblivious to them. 

Jibeom too then ducked behind a confused Jaehyun, the boy barely covering them cowering. The boy started to move out of the way before two sets of hands rocketed out and held Jaehyun in place, causing him to roll his eyes. 

“Don’t you dare move,” Jibeom whispered at him in threat. “That kid knows our faces.” 

“How do you guys know everybody?” Jaehyun exasperatedly whined at them throwing his hands in the air. 

Donghyun shrugged in response, but Jibeom was too busy glaring at where Y and the other kid walked. 

“Is that…” Jibeom whispered to Donghyun, eyes still fixed on the unknown, oddly familiar boy. 

The two old friends squinted their eyes, attempting to make out the face sitting beneath the tuft of fluffy light pink hair before Jangjun suddenly emerged from around the corner and pointed at the boy across the grass. 

“YOU!” the second year screamed and dead sprinted through the quad after the pink haired boy. 

“Oh my god. It is,” Donghyun breathed out in awe as Jangjun chased the fourth pledge in a battle of thundering legs closer to them and Joochan’s face became clearer. 

Y looked beyond annoyed and just watched the two fly by him circling around the quad. Jangjun caught up with the other and tackled him into the grass, their sides swiping by a patch of flowers and causing a flurry of petals to erupt into the air. They notice Mijoo walk up a boy beside them, who was sitting on the stairs of the dining hall, ankles crossed and a lollypop sticking out of his mouth. He looked like a model on his day off, languidly thrown across the steps. Mijoo opened her mouth to say something but the boy lifted his hand and cut her off. 

“Not my problem,” he drowned, rolling the ball of the lollypop into his cheek. “He’s not enrolled, now is he?” 

“How could you possibly know that, Kai?” Mijoo shot at him, hands on her hips. “You don’t talk to anybody!” 

“I am QM and I do know exactly who is the most likely to start shit,” he explained. “And that,” he paused to take the lollypop from his lips, and point it at the wrestling boys, “is not on my list.” 

Jaehyun swatted Jibeom and Donghyun’s arms on either side of him and the boys turned to find Jangjun hands wrapped around Joochan’s neck. The next second, Mijoo stormed across the grass, hair flying behind her in a curtain. She wrenched her brother off the pledge and threw him back into the grass. She then knelt down beside Joochan and stuck her finger in his face, the young boy trying to scramble away before he hit the flower bush again. 

“I won’t let him kill you but don’t you dare fuck with my brother,” she growled. 

Joochan’s response had every spectator who had stopped to witness the early morning brawl reeling with confusion. The pink haired boy threw his head back and laughed. 

“Dude, it’s fine.” 

Mijoo swivelled around to the boy she had discarded with a look of question. 

“I wasn’t going to kill him,” her brother mumbled. “We’re cool.” 

The girl was silent for a second, processing, before she stood up again and just left without another word. As she passed the three boys on the edge of the quad near the dining hall she stopped and looked them up and down. 

“I am so happy I don’t have to deal with you little shits next year,” she said and left. 

It wasn’t until the administration had effectively caught them all and loaded them onto one of the school’s many speed boats that Jibeom and Donghyun finally got to introduce Joochan to Jaehyun, explaining that they had all previously known each other… and Jangjun… and Y. It was a mess working out the connections. 

“So how’d you do it?” Jaehyun asked the boy sat next to him, rolling waves bobbing the boat up and down in a steady arch. “How’d you get on campus before anyone else?”

“The tunnels,” Joochan got out in between mouthfuls of Jibeom’s energy bar. “Did none of you think to rent some scuba gear and drill a freaking hole in the old tunnels?”


	20. Destructive Creation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hey girl, why haven't you written any updates for this in like two weeks?" you might ask - oh i dont know, I'm writing a dissertation and I accidentally wrote a whole OTHER book before I finished this one but you know ...

The close of January brought with it a tumbling chill of promises and secrets and whispers that tickled the exposed necks of students as they ran about buildings, seeking refuge from a particularly biting season. It was playful, the sea, as it thrashed onto their little island with a sense of carefree joviality. The sun always seemed more hesitant to break through the throws of cotton fluff tucking it to sleep among the marbled grey sky. January was always a time for deep set ennui, a yearning boredom and an increased proclivity toward thick cable knit sweaters and haplessly discarded blankets. Although, the weather, at least according to Tag, had not been nearly as bad as one winter he had taken in Nunavut where the frost had frozen them all inside a large drafty cabin, the smell of smoke from an all-consuming and perpetually crackling fire having tormented his nose for so long the scent now pervaded his mind with memories of shivers and visibly swirling breaths. 

Sujeong had, after winter break’s extended pull of stretched weeks, sauntered back onto campus with a new pair of diamond studded golden hoops and a renewed listless confidence from her more youthful days at the Factory that not only brushed away the words behind her back but stomped them into the snow laden earth with the heel of her fluffy black snow boots, grinding it down until the bones cracked and the lungs collapsed and the rumours squeaked out their last words of baseless accusation before succumbing to the bottom of her foot. Tag and S.J. might even venture to say she had lit the words on fire after, watching with a self-satisfied smiled as they charred up beyond recognition. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t have enjoyed the sight as well. 

Today, a random little Wednesday, was one of those odd historical breaks for something or other and the entire factory let out early after lunch hour to… well, the teachers were off doing something. No one ever exactly cared enough to ask. And the students relished in the few none bogged down hours where they felt restful enough to begin thinking in any sort of non-academic capacity. How Sujeong had managed to plan their trips whilst studying for second year government was an amazement to both of the boys- not that she would ever let them forget it. Practice, she always said. It was practice for a life where she wasn’t allowed to be anything less than perfect. It was practice for the inevitably shining future they would all eventually vault themselves into, hers a little sooner. 

“And that’s why I hate sarin,” Sujeong finished, turning to look at the boys. 

Tag had a confused lilt to his head a furrowed brow which almost spoke offense to her words if not for the utter bafflement with which it found itself shackled and Seungmin gave her a habitual nod that seemed to continue up and down in that usual manneristic agreement people took on when they attended a lecture outside their field of study or networked with an incredibly microfocused expert in a field they found themselves not particular drawn to. She wasn’t sure which one was better but took them both in stride as the innocently supportive gestures they were and smiled. 

“So what are we doing today?” she asked. 

Seungmin picked his cup up from the table, and took a prolonged sip of the steaming tea in his cup, letting the comforting ease of the steam warm his nose as he leisurely took in the liquid while Sujeong waited. Tag’s expression still bore his earlier reaction to the second year’s story as he tried to piece together her words. Seungmin had long given up trying to make sense of any of it. 

“I think,” Seungmin finally started to answer, pulling the cup away from his lips. “I think that we should do something productive.” 

“Ugh, what does that mean?” Sujeong threw out, slumping herself across the dining hall table, arms reaching out before her head in a clasped line that pushed her plate out the way and nearly collided with Seungmin’s glass had he not had the hindsight to notice and save it. 

“The 1993 Papal addresses…” Tag murmured. “Why 1993 again?” he asked the girl. 

She shrugged. “Good year.” 

Tag took it in for a second, processing, eyes glued to the elaborately tiled floor. “Well yeah, but-”

“Those paintings in the basement of Minerva that Sujeong managed not to fire damage too badly,” Seungmin started. 

“You’re welcome,” the girl added in. 

“We can use those materials,” he continued after backflowing her with a nod, “to fore some shit. I mean it’s pre-atomic bomb. It’s pre 1963 – that fucking media placating chicken scratch of garbage,” he added the last part as an aside. “But, it doesn’t have the radiocarbon 14 saturation in the paint or the canvases. That stash of sub-tier finger painting has been locked in one of the world’s most reclusive, air tight basements since pre-British empire!” 

Sujeong had never thought about it. She wasn’t sure why and damn sure right now she was mentally punching herself in the stomach for it, but he was right. It was pure, pre-Mutually Assured Destruction, material. 

“There’s a Moret down there?” Tag seemed to snap out of it at the degrading remark of amateur classification. 

“Yeah,” Seungmin shot back, obviously not backing down. “And he’s a fucking poser? Your point?” 

“Moret isn’t a poser!” Tag’s voice rose. “That’s my goddamn point!” 

Sujeong flinched at the twisting backs of some of their peers, glancing over their shoulders at the noise and giving her curious gazes full of judgement and morbid curiosity which honestly grated on her psyche as much as a sharpened swiss army knife on a chalkboard.

“Oh god, are you serious?” she chided them, drawing up her chest form the table to glare at them. “Not again.” 

Seungmin shot her an emotionless mask of a look. “What do you think about Henri Moret?” 

She sighed as she made eye contact with him, shoulders dropping and muscles slackening as she realized. “He’s a fucking poser,” she murmured, already regretting it – not for the words but for how she knew Tag would react. 

“HE’S NOT A POSER!” the poor boy defended. “What’s wrong with you people?!” They were sure that if they hand physically dragged from the dining hall that afternoon that he would have continued to preach to the unwilling masses with his diatribe of artistic integrity and unique personal expression. 

“You know,” Sujeong mused as they made their down that same spiral staircase where Tag and Seungmin had first met her. “We could reasonably market forgery as a legitimate club to the administration and get recognized for it. We could get titles and funding and all that jazz.”

“You want to tell the school we’ve been committing white collar art theft?” Seungmin asked. 

“It’s not like they’d ever let the uniform consist of anything else,” Tag scoffed. 

Seungmin sighed, hand going out to run along the curved stone wall as they neared the basement. “That’s not what-”

“Dude, I know!” Tag grumbled. “It was a joke!”

“It could be the Art Appreciation Society.” Sujeong continued undeterred as she pushed open the door. 

The boys stopped behind her, hesitating at the last step before the threshold as she passed through, dropping down to the floor before turning around when they didn’t follow. 

“Ass?” Tag asked, phonetically pronouncing the acronym for her proposed name. 

“Well, don’t say it like that!” She balked, whipping around with a glare and crossed arms. 

“A.A.?” Seungmin joined. 

“No!” she yelled at him. 

“Dude, that’s a pretty bad name,” Tag tacked on. 

“Yeah, I don’t know if I like it,” Seungmin added. 

“Intellect is dead,” she bemoaned, throwing her arms in the air as she moved over the haphazardly labelled crates of lesser known paintings from the impressionist period left over from what must have been an odd estate gifting at the death of some alumna one year. “Creativity means nothing anymore.” 

They helped unload the fraying, aged paintings from their rotting crates and laid out the priceless works upon the floor before they went to work flaking off similarly colored paints in order to melt them down into a workable paste and cleaning the canvases of their remnants. Some people didn’t know this, but art forgery was more of a science than anything else. Of course, Seungmin’s trained eye came in handy but it was the reality that pre-mid-20th century works were almost impossible to replicate beyond a carbon dating test due to technological advancements of nuclear fission. It was pretty damn remarkable the things a select few people could do with a brush, occasionally even rivaling that of the original, but it was bloody difficult to fake a carbon test. Hence, Seungmin had proposed the use of carbon 14 scarce materials which just so happened to be wasting away a number of floors beneath their beds. 

“The art market is always secure because people like pretty things,” Tag said while slowly mixing some green flakes together, melting them like chocolate in bain-marie and continuously nudging the still solid pieces around the bowl in a clockwise motion. “Why do you think we still have prostitution and modelling?” 

Sujeong and Seungmin stared at him wordlessly, the boy only looking up to see them when they hadn’t answered for close to ten seconds. 

“…not like I’m equating those,” he added indignantly. 

Seungmin looked over to Sujeong like he was going to say something but she stopped him, shaking her head and laying a hand on his shoulder. 

Tag went back to work humming, and mixing, and flaking paint chips off the old Morets, not without a pout and a soft lament, but he did it. Seungmin caught the boy whispering out a strong of what he thought were Japanese curses but he didn’t know well enough to say. It could have been a song, he thought. Some soft, quiet melody with punctuating words on a steady drum beat. And then again, as he thought earlier, Tag could have been cursing his guts right out of his stomach. 

“I think Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gaugin should have started a punk band called ‘The Cube’,” Tag mumbled as he mixed some paint to Seungmin’s approval before handing it to Sujeong where she straddled a stool, dotting light green grass into the countryside paysage. “Like what a missed opportunity.”

Seungmin slowly turned to the boy. “Is this genuinely how you go about your day?” he asked. “Are these the thoughts you have?”

It might have taken a second but Sujeong finally latched onto the words as well. She put down her brush and faced the glaring bots locked into a fierce silent battle.  
“What about Braque?!” she demanded. 

“Goddammit!” Tag exploded. “I always forget about Braque!”

“Hold on,” Seungmin threw in, both an angrily offended Sujeong and a frazzled Tag giving him their attention. 

He would have revealed in their undivided focus for a moment had he not been dangerously attached to the argument at hand. “Are both of you seriously not including Seurat?” he asked them. 

“FUCK!” Tag yelled. 

“You both seriously include Braque before Seurat and you call yourselves educated?” 

“I’m sorry,” Tag mocking fell to his knees, hands gripped before his chest in a prating motif. “Lord I repent for my sins.” 

Seungmin couldn’t help but laugh at the other, a genuine smile creeping up on his face as he watched his ex-roommate melodramatically writhe on the stone floor. And it was nice, for once, not feeling anything but a simple contentment. Once Tag had finished his dramatics and Seungmin had affirmed the colouring was right, Tag handed over another batch of ambiguously shaded green paint to Sujeong at her canvas. Seungmin followed the bucket over and studied the work over her shoulder as the brush strategically pulled down the page, gripping the canvas with its olive dripped bristled before pulling away and leaving a tiny gathering of the stuff, textured, on the end of the stroke. 

“It needs more…” he thought for a second, hand going up to grip his chin. “Systemic perspective,” Seungmin offered. 

Sujeong scoffed. “Maybe that boy just needed glasses,” she answered, not sparring him a glance. “Did anyone ever think about that?” 

“You know,” Tag mused, drawing Sujeong away from the piece she was working on. “Art forgery is the only crime where creation is the consequence.” 

“Oh, that’s rather sweet,” Sujeong relented. 

“He can be sweet,” Seungmin blurted, eyes remaining on the painting.

If Sujeong hadn’t been looking at the younger boy she wouldn’t have seen the soft little grin erupt on his face, if only for the littlest of whiles, before he schooled his face and went back to work melting and mixing.


	21. HEIST VI: Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England

The unsaturated marbled grey-blue of the sky, that same one which lonely beach fairing souls gazed at, their heads full of wanton dreams and hapless yearnings for things they would never really quite care enough to sift through the bog of lively thicket to find sitting nestled and hidden. The same marbled picture, colour sucked right out like an angel had bent low and pierced their lips and extracted the energy from the clouds, drinking down the beautiful array of shades until only the weak, petulant remnants of a once healthy blue were left. It was so typically, melancholically, surreally British, sitting behind the peaked entrance of the Ashmolean, three tiny bodies scurrying across the roofs with sure foot steps and a duffel of toys. 

“What did we want from here?” Seungmin asked them, running ever so slightly to catch up to the other two who were, rather remarkable and might he add suspiciously well trained in the art of rooftop activities. 

“There’s a Cezanne,” Tag answered, stopping behind one of the pillar dotting along the perimeter of the building’s roof. 

“And we really like Cezanne enough to come to Oxford?” the boy questioned, snuggling down into the high reaching turtleneck that tickled the bottom of his cheeks in a hairy wool. 

“Okay,” Sujeong flung around, nearly smacking Tag with the duffle hanging off her shoulder. “What’s wrong with Oxford?”

“Nothing!” Seungmin held up his hands in defence. “I mean it’s just that-” he started. 

“Seungmin,” Tag stopped him, taking a couple short steps over to his ex-roommate and placing a weighty hand on the other’s shoulder. “I don’t think we should question her right now.” 

Seungmin looked back over the aggressively confident aura radiating off of Sujeong’s back like a cape. “Yeah, maybe not,” he decided. 

“I just so dearly love the Ashmolean,” Sujeong murmured to herself, bending over the small skylight on the western most wing, hands running over the rusting metal of the hinges. 

“The columns?” Tag mused aloud. “Corinthian. The portico?” he repeated. “Greek. The prestige? Unparalleled.” 

“The history? Wack,” Seungmin tacked on, joining the two at the skylight. 

Sujeong’s shoulders slumped and she faced him, visible, visceral disappointment adorning her features. “Seungmin,” she chided him. 

“I mean it’s just a little unfair that the birth of the museum came from natural history catalogues and the goddamn Linnean classification of research and specimen when he was just a fucking slave driver of university assistants,” the boy rambled. 

The wind came through, pushing the heavy clouds through the sky, off center with the museum and now, against their stubborn will, being battled and heaved through the English landscape. The breeze rocketed up the side of the building in a funneled torrent and whipped their hair about in a playful frenzy, blinding and gagging and annoying itching their exposed, vulnerable faces. 

“What?” Sujeong asked. 

“Like Sloan had his own method, right?” Seungmin continued. 

Sujeong and Tag’s rapt attention unwillingly, or perhaps just inevitably, fell upon the boy as they crouched on the roof of the Ashmolean that February morning. It was hard not to stare at a wild thing, screaming and spitting passion, however unusual, from its lips like a dragon breathing fire. 

“And I love Sloan, so much,” Seungmin enunciated, his body gesticulating the emotion with rolling arms and expressive hands. “He deserves more credit. And then Solander comes in and he tries to do him justice - because the dude’s dead,” he added in a softer aside. “But-“ he held a finger up to accompany the pause. “He finds, more and more, as he working through annotating the guy’s initial Jamaica journey that Linnaeus really wasn’t that bad after all and he applies the fucking system to Sloan – even though, when he was alive – he had his own goddamn system because, and I'm just speculating here, Linnae’s sexual taxonomy was vulgar and debase and over simplifying and over-organizational and-”

“Seungmin?” Tag called out. 

“Yeah?”

“Can we not discuss this right now?”

“Yeah,” the other acquiesced. “Yeah, sorry.” 

“No, like I get it. I really do,” Tag added. “But also…” he trailed off, biting his lip, the silver ring strung through his blushing flesh there tilting to the side at the motion.

“Do you really think this is the time to be discussing early museum cataloguing methods?” Sujeong came in and asked the burgeoning economics student. 

Seungmin looked down from the lip of the roof, over the water gutter and passed the stone parapets to the ground below. He turned back to Tag with his laser cuter poised and Sujeong with the open carabiner of a harness frozen in the air before her belay. 

“You have a point,” the boy drawled. 

Sujeong motioned him over as Tag flicked down his portable googles and began to laser the glass. She clipped Seungmin’s own harness it beside hers to the small motor attached to the roof, clinking the metallic carabiner closed around his middle and moving back to check the system’s integrity with a quick yank of deft fingers. 

“I would have thought,” Sujeong started to say slowly, causing the other two to pause where they stood waiting to be dropped into the Ashmolean. “I would have thought,” she continued, “that we’d have been caught by now with the amount of bickering you to get yourselves up to.” 

“Did you tell her about Amsterdam?” Tag whispered to Seungmin. 

“No,” the boy quietly responded tucking his words into Tag’s ear out of Sujeong’s careful watch. “Why on earth would I tell her I stabbed you?”

“Technically I stabbed myself with your hand.” 

Seungmin snorted out a laughed and pushed the taller boy away with a playful shove that had his own belayed belt straining as he staggered backward with a laugh. Sujeong was there, as always, lurching the boy back to attention with a quick snap of the rope and a mournfully vexed sigh. 

“Boys,” she murmured, turning to the small square opening into the museum. 

“Yeah?”

She glanced over her shoulder to see them both at attention. “That’s not what-” she stopped herself and waved them off. “Let’s just get going, shall we?” 

God, she had hoped spending more time than necessary, more allotted time than they had budgeted, upon the roof in the not so clandestine skyline of Oxford wouldn’t come back to bite them in the asses. Nothing had yet so far save for the cave but it’s wasn’t like national acclaim was going to be garnered by spelunking for Goyas. No, not quite so much as it would for three young adults caught strapping a Cezanne to their backs and climbing out of one of the oldest museums in Britain. 

There was a wonderfully spartan room beneath the skylight, all white and glass and pale, pale slate adorned with a large marble man with an arm outstretched. And again that calm, that gentle rolling quiet that seemed to hunker softly over sculptures and display cabinets and innumerable works of art seemed to drift in on their backs and follow in the shadow of their footfalls as they processed through the building. It was well known by this point that Tag was rather distractible and Seungmin had taken to tapped the taller’s shoulder whenever Sujeong was turning a corner or slowing to a halt in the corridor. The paintings came with a stark contrast of deep ruby red upon the walls which soaked them in a rich sort of decadence coupled with chandeliers and pianos and sideboards. It looked as gauche as Seungmin remembered his distant cousin’s new property in Kiev looking when he visited in the summer before coming to Genius. And then, well, they found what they had come looking for. 

The thing about the View of Auvers-sur-Oise by Cezanne is that it’s delicate… like a child. There’s something so youthful about it but in the way of an impossible old thing which had refused to forget younger days. It was naïve in the way of a poor thing, having learned all there was to life and death and every horridly raw bit in between the two, that chose now to be naïve by intention. It was crumbling and growing. It was green: lush and deep and light and browning. It was a dotted landscape of a few scattered buildings, each no doubt holding inside them bodies and stories and tears and laughter. It was the distant spikes of trees and steeples and monuments to the dirt soaked earth at their feet. None of the three had ever been to Auvers-sur-Oise. None of the three ever had any inclination to go to Auvers-sur-Oise. It was enough - this little window, this brief moment – to gaze upon something so pristinely naked and beautiful and imperfect.

Yes, Cezanne was an artist but what this was… well, Sujeong had always thought the View of Auvers-sur-Oise was so real. No, not the forms or the shapes or the strokes. It was the feeling, it was the impression she could breathe in the soul of the town, the genius of the land. She hummed to herself in thought as she admired it hung there on the wall, cumbersome golden framing and lofty display. Maybe that’s why they called it impressionism. Here’s the thing: you can tell a women to love beauty, to seek it out in the world like she ought to only love beautiful things, but sometimes she rebelled and found something by which to call her own terminology and her own understanding of what beautiful things should be. That’s how Sujeong felt about Auvers. That’s how she had always felt about Auvers. 

“You know he used to just call it Groupe des Maison,” Seungmin told her. “Like it didn’t really matter the town or the place but just – it was simply a group of houses. It was just… there, I guess?”

“Isn’t it comforting?” she asked. “The ambiguity,” she clarified. “I like it but… does it unsettle you at all?”

“No,” Seungmin answered eyes trained on a far off Tag stuck before a Turner watercolor like it was the light at the end of long tunnel of darkness, an oasis in a desert baked clean by the beating sun of midday, like his life depended on memorizing every tiny detail of it. 

There’s something so strangely intimate about seeing someone become inspired. About watching their face as their equally focused and distracted mind latched onto something so completely they almost left their body, retreating into the realm of imagination and creation with nothing but a poem or a song or a painting. And never, one could never know, what it exactly was that the other was thinking or feeling in that moment but merely that their heartstrings wept at the thought, a thought they had long since longed to think, finally present before them by someone else, someone like-minded, someone quite a lot like them. 

“I don’t really think it does,” Seungmin whispered into the air, the words subconsciously making their way out through a pointed daydream of some other as he tracked the other boy’s gaze to the wall. 

“It’s funny,” she said and Seungmin suddenly remembered that she was indeed there beside him. “I always thought him a Bruegel the Elder guy from some reason.” 

He turned to her with a wistful smile. “Fall of the Rebel Angles.”

“Exactly,” she smiled back. “Yeah. Exactly that.” 

“The chaos,” Seungmin laughed lightly. 

“The majesty,” she added, lips quirking up again. 

The both of them looked onto Tag, frozen before the Turner, a beige and empty high street with a couple gowned academics strolling by, with their shadows falling at their feet on the cobblestones, just staring entranced into the brush strokes and the shadowed forms upon the canvas. 

“No, you know what?” Seungmin murmured. 

“He’s a bosch,” they breathed out together in perfect sync. 

Tag turned at their voices slightly echoing in the hall and found their intent gazes thrown his way. He looked over to the Cezanne. 

“Aren’t we taking that?” he asked, gesturing to the painting still very clearly untouched and hanging on the wall. 

“We can take the Turner,” Seungmin offered after a beat of silence in which Sujeong hadn’t answered and Seungmin couldn’t shake the genuine sincerity Tag had held in his eyes moments before. “It’ll be difficult and cumbersome, but we can take it if you want.” 

Tag responded with a tiny smile. “No, that’s alright,” he said and found the work again, admiring it a second. “It deserves to be looked at, don’t you think?” 

It was quiet again, for a bit, for the shortest of whiles as they watched him almost wordlessly say goodbye to it in the silent night. The boy looked at it like he was making a promise, inspired and full of baseless conviction. 

“Well,” Tag waltzed over and handed the knife to Seungmin. “Time to steal a priceless masterpiece?” 

“Time to steal a priceless masterpiece,” the other boy parroted back and before long they had stolen from their 6th museum. 

“It’s weird,” Sujeong said on the roof after- after they had rolled the canvas into a tightly bound tube, after they had scrubbed the security cameras with a small remote scrambler, after they had managed to climb back up and out of the skylight on knotted ropes of about four stories. “But I kind of wish there were fireworks.”


	22. Im and Kim and the Vinca Archeology Society

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey, this took a bit - grad schools are a thing... yay for those

There was a book on the engineering library, which is as loose of the term library as has ever been applied to a ‘collection’ of ‘books’, stacked and scattered and scrounged together in a haphazard systemless manner of whim and fancy. And every department had a prized possession: the economics’ much lauded gong, Genghis Kahn’s trebuchet from the clandestine antique weapons museums, what have you. The engineering department, despite explicit ownership over an entire cache of decommissioned warheads they used to lazily decorate their hangers like a sculpture garden and a working nuclear reactor with an adjoined uranium enricher, prized one little book above all else in a weird sentimental little character no one knew they had. It was stuck right in its own little near barren shelf, a litany of crawled and crumbled pages laid around it like a shrine of sorts, academic sacrifice (and literal sacrifice as was customary, and at this point expected, from a good Genius student). It was an amended version of the Anarchist’s Cookbook. And yes, what a cliché. And yes what a cowardly author refusing to accept responsibility. And yes, what a seeming amateur, banal, pedestrian text. But again, in reminder, it’s amended. 

Red marker scrawls and post it notes, stuffed with extra sheets of papers displaying perfected bomb recipes and annotated equations, chemical anecdotes detailing different desired reaction variation outcomes, odd power smudges and coloured smears. It was beautiful and the fruitful work of the entire department over the years: a tome really. There were reference numbers for other books in the collection, in the other department’s libraries, in private collections worldwide, and for government archive copies. There were comments on the oddly human comments on trial and error and mishaps outlined purely for entertainment and notes between different unbodied voices writing back in forth in a torrid affair of wits. If you wanted a record of the factory, of its students and its work and its very existence, the Amended Anarchist’s Cookbook was where you would find it. Perhaps this facet of necessary secrecy, of documented records of nefariousness, prompted its special place. Perhaps that was the case. But, as you noticed the tiny smiles of the first years who laid eyes on its pages for the first time, or that nostalgic wistfulness with overtook fourth years flipping through its pages one last time for memories’ sake with their friends and tipping back heads with laughter at their own additions, it was more likely something more… more likely sentimentality. 

Kim Nayoung, affectionately termed the Kim of ‘Im and Kim’, sat at a desk scribbling down notes from a column of the very same book which an old friend of hers, a senior in the economics department, had written a number of years ago. Bora had led her to the book when the younger was complaining over the phone the night prior about her project, refusing the whining and instead reminding the harried student of the greatest experimental research text at the entirety of Genius. 

“What do you think it means when someone gives you a giant roman clock for your room?” Kim mused aloud, lifting her head for the first time in an hour. 

“Is this a hypothetical?” Im countered from across the desk without meeting the other’s eyes, her legs tucked up under herself, folded into the plush of the chair’s cushion, perfectly pressed black slacks contrasting to the rich, warm wood of the frame. 

Kim heard a noise from her side and turned to find Kei’s utterly bewildered expression, pinched brows, pressed eyes, and a hard mouth. “Is this a relationship question?”

“It was Sujeong,” she clarified, still with a breathy, confused ponderance to her tone. “Sujeong just gave me a giant roman block for my room this morning and…”

“And?” Kei asked. 

“Well…” Kim Nayoung sat there for a second, silent eye contact with the other, clearly floundering. “You don’t find it odd?” she insisted. 

“I mean she gave me a bunch of minted Spanish galleons I assumed she won at a charity auction,” Kei answered. “And her own room is fucking decked out with some Goyas and some busts,” the girl continued with a smile, arms coming up to fold across her blazered chest in an elegant sweep. “She puts her ties over Nero’s head like he’s a frat boy and it’s a goddamn aesthetic.” 

“What about the fact that he’s next to an iced up Galba dripping in gold chains?” Im added, finally meeting their eyes and setting her book down. “They would not be friends,” she said with the upmost conviction as if she had seen palpably witnessed their animosity personally. 

“Have you not seen the news?” Kim asked them. 

Kei let out a melodramatically offended gasp with a comically dropped jaw and widened eyes to match. “You think I watch the _news_?” she spat out. 

“Yes?” 

“I don’t have time for that b.s.,” Kei waved her hand dismissively and the returned it to the crux of her inner elbow to rest. 

“For the news?” Kim questioned. 

“Wait but what happened?” Im leaned across the wood towards them, clearly intrigued. 

“There was a giant roman block…” Kim said slowly, swiveling from Im’s face to Kei’s before she continued, “stolen from an archeological site in Vinca…” she changed back, “24 hours after they announced the discovery.” 

“A day?!” Im blurted, immediately quieting at the echo off the vaulted ceiling. “A day?” she asked, softer. 

Kei whistled loudly and relaxed further into her seat, head nodding appreciatively as she process the information. 

“Like who has time to go to Vinca?” Kim rambled. “And why the hell did she give it to me? Does she want my notes from second year?” 

“A day,” Im continued to breath to herself, impressed, eyes distantly unfocused in the direction of the shelves. 

“Shouldn’t you be telling her not to do that?” Kim directed at the girl beside her, one of Sujeong’s preferred seniors at the factory.

“Do what?” Kei asked. 

“Travel internationally and very obviously raising flags of art theft?” 

“She already is doing that?”

“I know,” Kim said. “That’s what I-”

“I’m starting to think its not such a good idea now that you bring it up…” Kei mumbled, cutting the other off. 

“Oh my god,” the girl groaned. “Can you not!”

“What?” Kei challenged, voice raising in whiny defense. “I’m worried.”

“That’s what I was trying to say this entire time!” Kim shot back, frustrated and nearly springing up from her chair. 

“You were just talking about her transnational crime market,” Kei told her. 

“I think you should tell her to be more discreet about it,” Im cut in. “She’s probably going to get caught and that’s gonna be like a hell of a lot of paperwork,” she shook her head. “Very boring,” she added. “I would know.” 

“I mean that was my idea anyways,” Kei shrugged indignantly, “But okay.”

The two Nayoungs immediately started shoving their work into their bags, an trained precision leafing through the pages on the table and discarded the notes which would be dropped in the confidentiality shredder beside every library door. 

“Wait,” Kei stopped them, as the two began to stand. 

“What?” Im paused, hand in the air above her bag strap. 

“Why didn’t she give it to me?”

“What?” Im repeated. 

“The Vinca block,” Kei clarified, facing the other Nayoung with slumped shoulder. “Why didn’t she give it to _me_? I thought she liked me better?” 

“…are you genuinely offended right now?” Kim balked. 

“No…” Kei pouted. 

"Yes you are!" Kim turned to Im with a devilish smirk. “She’s offended!” 

“Maybe she needed help with a government project?” Im offered to Kei in an attempt to console her friend. 

“Maybe she decided she liked me better,” Kim threw in with a little shoulder dance, rocking her body in a tiny shake of jest. 

“I want a roman block…” Kei grumbled.

“Wanna go ask her for one?” Im asked the other. 

Kim pushed her chair under the lip of the desk with one Mary-Jane clad foot. “I thought we were supposed to tell her to be careful?” 

Im did the same but with a gentle hand on the back of the wood and a slower slide. “That doesn’t mean she can’t just take one more.” 

“Yeah,” Kei joined in a mocking parrot. “That doesn’t mean she can’t just take one more… for me.”

Kim gave her a very unimpressed look, leaned across the other to slam the girl’s chair into the table while maintaining expressionless eye contact, and then walked away. 

“That’s bad for the wood,” Kei called out. “It splinters!” 

None of three had been to the second year’s dorm since the younger has begun her heists at the beginning of the year. The door opened inches, merely inches into the room as the new thick woven tapestry upon the floor bunched up behind the portal. The three girls wedged themselves inside, slipping through the sliver and nearly falling into the space. Here’s the thing: None of them had really kept up with the sheer quandary that was stuffing a small shared space, with two beds and an entire neo-classically carved armoire, full of heavy gilded frames and marbled busts and antiquities. 

“Holy fuck,” Kim breathed out. 

“Are these…” Kei picked up a fistful of old Spanish coins from a porcelain bowl on the table by the door which also seemed to hold the roommate’s lip balm. “These are,” she paused and read 1715 on the face beside a stumped cross icon. 

The bed was wedged in the corner underneath what appeared to be no less than 12 masterpieces, two vividly graphic Goyas taking centre stage above the headboard and centered along the longest side. Some had built in light mechanisms on their frames and others were tacked up like posters, naked and bare and rough edges on the wall. What had once been Rome’s greatest rivalry on the windowsill was joined by some miniature jade figurines and seeming Greek discuses. But the floor, oh the floor. 

“How do they not step on anything?” Im mumbled, eyes darting around from stack to stack to stack of piled paintings, strewed around like a bibliophiles haven of heaped tomes. 

Sujeong sat on her bed, a perfectly pressed blazer and kilt over navy tight clad legs, bare feet tucked up under her legs as she typed away. 

“So what have you been up to?” Kei asked the younger. 

Sujeong slamming her laptop lid shit with an all too prevalent force which made even herself cringe at the unintentional aggression and sighed as she looked up to fourth years in her doorway. 

“Reading about Eileen Gray,” the girl answered with a mournful tone. “I mean give that girl a jackhammer but also why the fuck are your rugs overlapped? Like Ma’am…there is a sink in the middle of your hallway!” she enunciated with a hand flung out beside her. 

“Am I supposed to know what she’s talking about?” Im leaned over and whispered into Kim’s ear. 

The other merely shook her head distracted, jockeying to get a full view of just how much paraphernalia was in the dorm room. 

“And then someone said she was both familiar and unfamiliar, in that inexplicit indescribable way,” Sujeong mocked. “Like excuse you, I fucking live in ambiguity!” 

“Hey babe,” Kei called out, stopping her as she gingerly picked her way across the landmine of priceless painted canvases. “Is this maybe getting out of hand?” 

“What? The Eileen thing? I mean like sure I have some very heated opinions about Adrienne Górska – don’t we all,” she added in aside. “But I don’t think it’s-”

“No,” Kei cut in softly, settling herself on the foot of the younger’s bed. “You know what I mean,” she added, gaze slipping from Sujeong to the gigantic and quite gruesome child of Francisco’s visionary hand and whatever demon was plaguing him at the time. 

“It’s a hobby,” she shrugged. 

“This is a lot,” Im mumbled in the corner, staring dead into the eyes of a Reynold’s portrait depicting a flowery young waif beside a crumbling Grecian column.

“Oh right,” Kim leapt over a stack of frames, a beige tarp thrown gently over the top. “Kei wanted a Vinca block!” she told Sujeong. 

“No, I didn’t sa-”

“Ha!” Sujeong blurt out before Kei could defend herself. “There’s only _one_ Vinca block,” she laughed. 

“Then any old Roman block will do,” Kim answered and leaned toward the second year with a raised hand pretending to whisper the secret over. “She’s jealous.” 

“I am not jealous!” Kei stamped her foot, causing the floor to shack and a frame to fall from its precarious resting place on a pile near the foot of Sujeong’s bed. 

“Oh, I’m so-”

Kei halted her apology when Im had made it over to the discarded canvas and was simply standing there staring at it in shock. “Is this a Van Gogh?” she asked. 

Kei and Kim both whipped their heads around to the second year who was defensively folding her arms across her chest. 

“I’m not cliché for taking it,” she grumbled. “S.J. said so.” 

“That’s not-”

“Do you want the Roman block or not?” she snapped out at Kei. 

“…yes.”


	23. HEIST VII: Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, Nederlands

It seemed incredibly normal to have three Burberry peacoat donned students roaming the halls of a Dutch museum in the middle of spring break, sipping overly priced coffee from the café, and speaking in hushed whispered behind exhibit brochures. And it seemed so incredibly normal to see them pointing out specific works with discerning eyes and exchanged glances and the ever occasional subtle head nod. 

“It’s… unassuming,” Seungmin whispered over his shoulder, head tucked into the curved of Tag’s neck where he leaned down to the other. 

“It’s easy?” Tag shrugged back. 

“But why is it so unassuming?” Seungmin continued, almost in a hiss. “Why does it seem so easy?”

“Are you naturally this distrusting or someone make you this way?”

Sujeong pushed herself up between them and yanked both the boys in toward her. “He’s right,” she said and they both paused, waiting. “It’s deceptively unassuming.” 

Seungmin shot Tag a look as if to say, ‘I told you so’ and the other simply stuck his tongue out in response. 

“Can I help you?” 

Both boys jumped at the sudden voice and found a bright eyes docent standing behind them. Sujeong smiled back. 

“No, were quite alright thank you.” 

“You don’t need help finding anything?” the girl pressed, eyes shifting to Tag every other second. “A favourite painter perhaps?”

“No, we’re good,” Sujeong’s smile got tighter. 

“Are you-”

“Thank you though,” she waved the docent off. “Have a nice day.” 

“She seemed nice,” Tag noted. 

Sujeong swiveled to meet him. “She was hitting on you.” 

The boy’s brows knit together. “But I didn’t even talk to her?” 

“Trust me she was hitting on you.” 

Tag furrowed his face into a deeper scrunch of confusion and looked off in the direction the docent had begrudgingly wandered, a pensive expression etching itself into his cheekbones. looking off after the direction the docent. Sujeong waved him off and found Seungmin very intently scrutinizing the space. 

“It’s a glass building,” the boy continued to himself, looking around and speaking words right as he thought them. “Like there’s way too much glass. Did they never do a risk assessment? Does the word security not existing in the Dutch language?” 

“I’m pretty sure I had better security in my childhood tree house,” Sujeong added. “But then again it was in the swiss alps and I had at least five different Fabergé eggs my grandmother had given me inside, so who’s to say?” 

“Negligent,” Seungmin nodded to himself. “It’s negligent.” 

“It’s more like a gallery than a museum,” Tag finally refocused on their conversation, eyes drifting back from the empty doorway. 

“Yes! Exactly!” Seungmin huffed. “Also,” the boy added. “Not that you would need it, but… and I shit you not, their schematics from the redesign of the west wing were posted on YouTube. Like the actual blueprint. I’m not even joking.” 

“That’s… sad?” Sujeong wondered. 

“Yes. Yes it is sad,” he nodded in agreement. “Very sad.” 

Tag’s face lit up in remembrance. “Oh yeah, I remember you showing me. It had like…” he gestured vaguely in the air, “…wind draft data and shit.” 

Sujeong hummed and looked around, turning in a slow circle. “I honestly feel bad for them.” 

“They deserve it,” Seungmin told her. 

A chorus of surprised yelps and sounds emitted from around the corner and a flurry of pamphlets littered itself and flew across the pristine floor. A couple children laughed and went to chase down one of the particularly feisty papers that drifted farther than the others. 

“They deserve it,” the boy repeated, more conviction and more hopelessness. 

\---

The rear emergency exit door slowly swung open and clattered against the wall inside. There were no alarms, no sirens, no lights, or anything. Just simple a warm rush of spring wind wafting inside the small, tunneled door, weaving between the three bodies stood at the threshold. 

“Is that it?” Sujeong asked. 

“Negligent,” Seungmin hissed back. 

“So I guess just go grab the Matisse,” Tag gestured to the unguarded masterpiece hung on the wall. 

“That’s so anticlimactic though!” Sujeong complained with a little stomp of her foot. 

Tag crossed his arms. “What did you want it to be?” he questioned. “Climactic? Need I remind you it’s better we don’t get physically harmed or arrested?” 

“But- but, Matisse deserves more theatrics,” Sujeong shot back. “How dare you!” 

Said Matisse was in fact Reading Girl in White and Yellow. Aptly named as it was, in fact, a portrait of a young women dressed in white and yellow leaned on her elbow atop a white clothed table with a vase of lively flowers just adjacent her shoulder. 

“What is it about people being too good to name paintings?” 

Sujeong’s jaw dropped at him. 

“Like what kind of fake humble dick decides not to label a painting because like what, I don’t know,”   
Tag rambled. “It isn’t good enough or something. Like it’s a literal masterpiece. What does that say about the rest of us?” 

“Oh, Matisse is so edgy,” Seungmin mocked, joining in. “He put shit in an ‘independent’ exhibition and called it ‘no. 3’.”

“It’s just the aura man, ya know,” Tag parroted. “It doesn’t need a name. It’s a feeling.”

“Can you both shut up?” Sujeong grit out. “I actually fucking like Matisse.” 

Seungmin mumbled something into his chest as he unhooked it from the wall, reaching up on tip toes to firmly grasp it around the base before gently lifting it right off and into Tag’s waiting duffel, unzipped and welcoming. 

“What was that?” she asked. 

“I said it’s more blue than white or yellow.” 

“… I hate you.” 

And the next of course, just the second frame along the wall that impulsively they just decided to swipe was a Lucian Freud. Now, Lucien was a rather prominent draughtsman, a portraitist of chilling melancholic dreams with paints. He was realist to the point of realistically portraying nothing but emotion and sentiment and nostalgia and just the form of a face as it tears had warbled its structure, as it bones would melt with pitied ennui. And of course the young man of the second world war had seen his fair share of melancholy and tears and pity. This particular canvas, right beside her demure friend, was a woman amidst a dream, eyes closed, cheeks red, and a soft ambiguity about her stillness. 

“Look it’s Sujeong!” Seungmin all but yell, excitedly pointing to the painting. 

She turned to him and then immediately dropped her smiled. “That literally looks nothing like me.” 

“It wasn’t supposed to be an insult?” Seungmin faltered, reaching from the frame. 

“Are you saying you don’t like it?” Tag teased her, a pointedly sharp elbow into the side of her ribcage to punctuate. 

“Moving on!” She announced, and was already darting across the floor to the Picasso on their list. 

“Enough of these geometric nerds,” Seungmin scoffed at her, as she waltzed away. “Join the cool kids club like Kandinsky.” 

“Okay, but there’s no way he wasn’t a straight up a physic,” Tag added, wrestling the second work into his bag. “He’s like art Rasputin.”

Sujeong turned around with Harlequin Head gently nestled in her arms. “You worry me.” 

Tag snatched it from her and answered, “I worry myself.” 

“Wait,” Seungmin stopped the boy before the frame made it inside the duffel, hand on his wrist and frightened look in his eye. 

“What?”

“You can’t put the Picasso in the bag with the Matisse,” he said. 

“Okay?” 

“It just doesn’t seem right.” 

Tag gave Sujeong a bewildered gesture and she just shrugged. He handed the painting to Seungmin with confused hesitance. As Sujeong had been raking her eyes across the space, she landed on a painting in the distance with had her beaming so wide Seungmin thought it might split her cheeks in two. 

“Oh look!” She called out. “It’s Seungmin!” 

“That’s Meijer de Haan,” the boy simply said, coming to join her. “Are you saying I look like Meijer de Haan?” 

“He looks disappointed,” she smiled back. 

“Yeah, definitely Seungmin,” Tag threw out, zipping one duffel shut and swinging an empty one around his side as he passed the former to Seungmin. 

“Is this about the Freud comment?” he asked Sujeong, slinging the masterpieces over his shoulder like one would a dirty gym bag. 

“I don’t know? Is it?” 

“You hold the worst grudges.” 

“He has a fun little ascot,” Tag offered. 

The other boy looked at him a moment to gauge the sincerely and then sighed. “I appreciate it but no.” 

“We could take the Gaugin,” Sujeong pointed to a section of the wall donned with a girl in front of an open window. 

“Why would we take the Gaugin?” Tag asked. 

“We could… conveniently misplace the Gaugin…” she tried again. 

“How would we conveniently misplace the Gaugin?” Tag asked again. 

“I don’t know… maybe it ends up at an old folk’s home on the outskirts of Rotterdam and goes underappreciated for seventy years?” 

Seungmin paused. “That’s very, worryingly specific.” 

“I think it’s a great idea!” she said and took it herself, clinging to it, and that was that; no use arguing with a teenage girl and her penchant for vengeance on famous sexist artists. 

“So are we allowed to put the Gaugin with the Matisse?” Tag asked. 

“No, of course not! Put him with the others.” 

“Your thought process really enamors me. I must say.” 

A masterpiece. One might call it priceless except for knowing the actual market price, because, well, everything had a price… always and forever and inevitably. Money buys things. Money makes things. Money hides things. And laws, well, finable laws were just tips from those inclined to trouble and family fortune. And something they had found - not just them, not just the three young impulses flitting about a world famous museum at night deciding their happiness was worth more than historical memory and cultural legacy, no, every kid at Genius – that when you’re given everything it just makes you want more. 

“So Charing and Waterloo?” a voice called put from around the corner. 

“What?” Sujeong called out to Seungmin’s disembodied voice in the distance. 

“I can take two Monet’s right?” 

Tag laughed as he stuffed the Gaugin in with the de Haan and the Freud and the Picasso. “Do you have something for bridges?” 

In two minutes flat, perhaps a second over from all the bickering, the three students had robbed the Kunsthal. No, not robbed, but liberated some great pieces from the clutches of a second tier museum. In two minutes they left the Kunsthal sitting there quietly in the night with seven naked sets of hooks upon the walls and seven useless plaques now missing the masterpieces they were named after. In two minutes, Tag, Seungmin, and Sujeong had completed their seventh heist.


	24. Priorities

“Sujeong…” Tag sighed, rolling over on the floor and gazing up at her with a pout, his laptop smushed into the carpeted floor beneath his hip bone, pushing into the ground. 

“Good lord,” Sujeong groaned, immediate and visceral, throwing her notebook down on the chair beside her as she glared at him. “If this about the fucking window again-” she began. 

“It’s not about the window!” Tag whined, interrupting her. 

They maintained eye contact in a silent passing where Sujeong’s eyebrow lightly quirked up as she waited. 

“I mean, yeah I would like to talk about the window,” Tag relented, rolling his eyes before stuffing the argument back down his throat again with a gulp. “But that’s not-”

“I don’t think he was ever _really_ mad at you,” she said. 

Tag huffed out all the air in his chest and flopped back down again. 

“Okay, maybe he was mad,” Sujeong corrected the despondently melodramatic boy. “But I think he’s gotten over it since then.” 

Tag stared up at the ceiling unmoving, letting his bones melt and his tendons unsnap from the limp muscle. “That’s not even the worst part,” he murmured. 

Sujeong shuffled about on the plush chair, extracting her folded legs from under herself, accidentally kicking the notebook off the seat next to her as she wrestled her legs down to the floor to lean toward Tag. 

“Did you do something worse?” she asked. 

“No, no,” he shook his head slightly. “It’s just…”

There was still snow outside, still a gentle hazy distraction of flutters and flurries and whatnot, sprinkles of frozen fluffy tears dusting tree tops like icing sugar on a gingerbread house. Sure the houses were stale, broken and battered and cracked, but they were beautiful. Pristine and perfect and foundational flawed like any good house should be. A healthy, hearty cocaine drip which certainly looked romantic in the light lighting to the right eye at the right time. It reminded him of Cloister Cemetery in the Snow, old brick and heavy flakes and terrifying obvious reminders of death scattered in the drifts, fallen over and tumbling down into cold, winter slumbers. Genius just had that sentiment about it, that harrowingly comfortable reminder. 

“We have to burn the Monet,” Tag finished, peeking out of his periphery at Sujeong. 

She faltered and leaned back again, crossing her legs. “What do you mean we have to burn the Monet?” 

“I don’t even think it’s my fault, really,” Tag rambled. “Honestly, I don’t think it was me. Like, I would bet on it and I’m not a gambling man. You know me. I’m not a gambling man.” 

“Tag, what on earth are you-”

Seungmin came barreling in, heaved chest choking down air, in the next second before she could finish her thought. He made eye contact with Sujeong as the door slammed closed behind him, echoing off the warmth of the walls. It was quiet in the reverb of the wooden portal plowing into the wall. 

“Interpol…” Seungmin threw out breathlessly, crazed eyes locked onto Sujeong’s. 

There was a moment where none of them spoke and she stared back at Seungmin. The boy nodded to her vacant expression and she finally realized what he meant, eyes blowing wide and jaw unintentionally dropping. Sujeong whipped her head around to Tag in the next instant. 

“Why the FUCK didn’t you tell me?!” 

“I was trying to!” Tag shot back. 

“No! You were lamenting like a goddamn Shakespearean character!” she chastised him. “Who even are you? Hamlet?” 

“I’d be Pippen and you know it!”

“But the Monet,” Seungmin continued, uncaring of whatever moment of theatrical self-realization was occurring between the other two. “I wanted to keep it.” 

“Didn’t we take two Monet’s?” Tag asked. 

“What?” 

“Monet,” he said. “Like I knew about Interpol but they only have information about a Monet,” he stressed. 

Seungmin and Sujeong exchanged a glance. 

“Goddammit I didn’t even notice,” he admitted. 

“How could you not notice?” Sujeong accused him. 

“I mean it wouldn’t really fucking matter anyways because all the manifest said was…”

“One Monet,” Tag finished for his ex-roommate. 

Seungmin groaned, fisting his hair with white knuckles. “I don’t fucking know which one!” 

Tag shrunk back from Seungmin, once again leaning into the table, hoping he could be absorbed into the wood. 

“Does this mean we have to burn them both?” Sujeong asked. “Because that’s sad,” she murmured. “I don’t want to pull a Khalil again. I am not destroying anything else.” 

“Not breaking anything?” Seungmin’s head tilted to the side, confused, his agitation dissipating as he addressed the girl. “Haven’t you seen what Mijoo and-” he halted by Tag’s sudden hand latched over his mouth in a desperate muffle. 

“Sujeong, we gotta burn them,” Tag cut in sternly. “It’s okay, we’ll have a nice little bonfire and everything. Send them off all proper.” 

Seungmin wrestled Tag’s hand away and glared at him, shoving the other’s arm away. “Why don’t we just sloppily fence them?” 

Sujeong all excited “Fence them on who? Anybody got a credit line with Interpol?”

“Nah, I got some expendable contacts,” Seungmin answered. “One guy didn’t even know who Martorell was.”

“And what was his name?” Sujeong innocently inquired. 

Seungmin pointed in a very insistent finger at you. “You’re not allowed to kill anybody.” 

Sujeong stared him down and folded her arms across in front of her, in a sturdily stubborn act of defiance. “Even if it’s someone with offensively bad taste?”

“If that was your reasoning then what is Tag still doing here?” Seungmin shot back with a smirk toward the boy. 

Tag threw his arms out beside him with an exhausted face but not even bothering to say anything against it. He was seated on the floor, slumped into the side of the coffee table. 

“We can also forge them right?” she asked, knowing the answer and still holding onto the false hope that maybe, based on nothing but faith, someone would say yes. 

“I’m sorry,” Seungmin coxed softly. “They know one of them is missing and…”

“I don’t know that much about Monet but I could do it,” Sujeong plead. “I never really liked Monet but I’m willing to-”

“Why did we take him then?” Tag hummed, neck craned up to see her from his position near the feet of her chair. 

“I think Seungmin wanted it?”

“Me? I didn’t want it!” Seungmin defended. “I mean not like I didn’t _not_ want it because it’s Monet but I didn’t go out of way for it!” 

“You just have a thing for bridges and you need to admit it.” 

“Sujeong, I do NOT have a thing for bridges!” Seungmin whined out. “We’ve been over this. I have a thing for impressionism!” he yelled. 

“Me too, man. And boats,” Tag added wistfully. “I really like boats. Especially the _Quai de la Bourse_ ones.” 

Seungmin shot him a bewildered gesture, leaving his annoyance with Sujeong on the backburner as he sought an explanation. “What are you even saying? We’re talking about Monet?”

“I know,” Tag responded casually. “I was just thinking about Pissarro.”

“Yeah, but-” 

“They remind me of each other, okay?” Tag floundered, obviously upset someone was latching onto his comment. “Is that illegal?” he asked the other boy rhetorically. “It’s not like I’m bringing up Delacroix?” 

“No, but- wait,” Seungmin processed the words. “Delacroix? He doesn’t even-” 

“That’s what I’m saying! I didn’t bring up Delacroix!” 

“Why would you?” Seungmin demanded. 

“I didn’t!” Tag raised his voice to match his ex-roommate’s. “I’m saying it wouldn’t have made any-”

“What about Interpol!?” Sujeong interrupted them. 

Tag snapped his fingers and turned from Seungmin’s confused figure to face her. “Interpol!” he exclaimed. “You know I really had no faith in the Dutch police system to even get that far.” 

Sujeong turned to Seungmin with a bright eyes, ready to provide the perfect solution but was stopped when he held up a hand. 

“You can’t forge them,” he shook his head at her. 

“Why not?!” she whined. 

“You know why not,” Tag inserted. 

She looked back and forth between the two of them – which, of course, it was today of all days they decided to agree on something – and grumbled. “I hate this fucking club.” 

\-- 

“Sujeong, let go.” 

“No.”

“Sujeong…”

“No!” 

She spat the unruly wisps of hair from her mouth, a couple tendrils sticking to her lip as the rest of her locks battered her face in tiny flaps from the tormenting wind. It flew into her eyes and covered her vision briefly, neither of her hands free to swat it away and tie the tangle back behind her neck. Her fingers latched on the canvassed frame in front of her, strong and stubborn. The gentle crashing waves of the sea on the shoreline bracketed her body, a surround sound of the stormy waters as she stood at the end of the dock. 

“I changed my mind,” she answered Tag. 

“Y and Jinhoo only have so long,” Seungmin reminded her, placing a hand on her wrist, the veins and tendons bulging out as she gripped her hand around the painting where it waited over the air and the sea and the deep, deep, dark depths falling down forever. 

“But-” she looked over at the two fourth years rocking back and forth on the deck of one of the Factory’s resource acquisition vessels before them. 

She stood one foot on the end of the desk and the other posed on the lip of the boat, swiveling side to side with the ship. 

“Okay,” she sighed. “Okay, fine… but you better take good care of them,” she whispered, relinquishing the painting to Y. 

“I promise,” Y smiled back.

“I mean it,” she called out, stepping back. “I’ll kill you.” 

“I know,” the elder winked. “I don’t doubt it.”

“Stop flirting!” Seungmin yelled at his older friend as they boat pulled away. 

“Can’t help it,” Y shrugged with a laugh. 

“Ugh!” Seungmin groaned. “Just go already!” 

“Yeah!” Sujeong joined, yelling out over the storm and the sea. “Just go already!” 

“Just remember I’m doing you a favor,” Y beamed at them, with a mock salute and an impossibly carefree wave that was equal parts charming and infuriating. 

“What are you?” Sujeong grumbled at the boy. “Maret Anne Sara’s Pile o’Sapmi? Because you’re making me depressed!” 

She turned to Seungmin and Tag and rolled her eyes. “It was… ‘distressing for children’,” she put into air quotes. “Like whatever. Grow up, you little bitch. The world is unfair.” 

“You need a drink?” Tag asked. 

“Yeah,” she nodded, settling down finally. “I need _a lot_ of drinks.”


	25. Four Haystacks and a Funeral

Yein emerged from their bio-weapons class simply reeling from the lecture. There were a couple lackadaisically unfocused classmates who seemed to drift off in all directions as they parted from the room quite alike a scattering of pearls viciously pulled off the neck of a slumbering women and spilled to the floor at thrusting rip of a mighty fist; that or terribly frightened pigeons in the Vatican square when stomping feet rolled in. Who’s to say? 

“She’s such a flammable person,” Yein growled into the open air of the courtyard. “I just…” she swung her oversized black tote around to her shoulder. “She’s flammable,” the girl fell on the word again with more conviction. 

“Do you mean like… physically?” Hoyeon asked her, coming to stop at her side. 

“No,” Yein rolled her eyes, glaring down a brick in the column before her and then turning to the other. “But also yes,” she admitted. “I mean everyone is physically flammable.” 

Hoyeon shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You don’t need to know,” Tag said, clapping the other boy on the back as he joined them. “It’s like a fact.”

“I don’t really know if I like the phrase ‘like a fact’?” Yein told him. 

“Why not?” Tag questioned. 

“Wait,” Hoyeon stopped them. “So what did you mean?” he asked Yein. 

“I meant like…” Yein trailed off, focusing her eyes into the distance and moving her hands through the air in hesitant circled of no descript nature before letting them fall. “She’s incendiary,” she decided. 

“That’s just a synonym,” Hoyeon deadpanned. “It doesn't help me.”

“Come on,” Tag groaned, linking himself through Yein’s bent elbow. “She obviously means Mrs. Raksha has a combustible personality.”

“Thank you!” Yein exclaimed in gratitude and tugged the boy closer. 

“That’s just another word out of context!” Hoyeon complained. “It doesn’t mean anything!” 

Tag exchanged a knowing glance with Yein that only served to reinforce the other boy’s bolstering frustration. “Where you even there?” he asked Hoyeon. 

Hoyeon sighed deep in his chest, looking off at the shuffling feet of their exhausted compatriots, wishing – utterly, viscerally wishing- that he could join them in a mindless complacency instead of whatever concocted conversation Yein and Tag dreamed up that day. 

“By the way,” Yein cut him off. “A couple kids are going down to the docks later. One of the guys in the Bribery and Coercion course got a shipment of Veuve and we’re celebrating spring exams.”

“But we haven’t started studying yet?” Tag mumbled. 

Yein smiled. “No one needs to know,” was her coquettish response. 

“Okay cool,” Tag decided. “Who is it?” 

“Oh, it’s Villain but he can’t come,” she shook her head, voice dropping into a whisper. “I heard he’s on a lot of liquid THC and he can’t move his body.” 

“Why?” Hoyeon asked. 

Yein paused. “Why is he on THC or why can’t he move?” she tried to clarify. 

“Do I have to pick one?”

“Well now you haven’t picked either.” 

They stared at each other with nothing but a background of passing beats of footfalls and spring breezes rustling through the trees, their chests rising only to fall again.

“When are you going?” Tag asked. 

Yein blinked herself awake from the staring match. “Four,” she answered, glancing over at him. 

“Oh sorry,” Tag lamented, pulling his arm away and adjusting his backpack once he had stepped back half a step. “I can’t come then. I have A.A.”

"What?” Hoyeon faltered. 

“We’re having a funeral,” he continued. 

“What?” it was Yein’s turn to murmur. 

“Monet burns and my heart aches.” Tag wistfully added as if in explanation. 

“Okay?” Hoyeon breathed back. 

“Wait,” Yein latched herself onto Tag with a tug of his arm, gaining the boy’s attention. “So who’s in A.A. exactly?”

“Seungmin and Sujeong.” 

“That’s it?” she asked. 

“Yeah?” Tag replied with a level of undiscernible hesitance. 

Yein smiled and punched the boy’s shoulder with a swatted fist. “You better not keep Sujeong waiting then,” Yein teased. 

“Oh, it’s not her I’m worried about,” Tag answered. 

Before she could respond, Hoyeon grabber her attention. “Where are you guys meeting? For the dock thing?” 

Yein let her eyes slip away from one boy to the other. Hoyeon’s hair was more orange now, faded into a sift saturation of colour that made him somehow softer. She wasn’t sure what exactly made him befriend Tag at first. He was nothing like his older brother, so much so Yein had found herself throwing a relentless barrage of paper airplanes at him throughout their shared classes to pesteringly ask for proof of their blood relation at any given opportunity. She had not, unfortunately, found anything against his claims despite her own personal, and completely baseless, assumptions otherwise. 

“The gate,” she told him. “You should bring Neil.” 

“Haha,” the boy mocked her. “I’ll meet you there,” he saluted her, nodding to Tag before he left. 

“Neil?” Tag asked her. 

Yein waved the boy off with an ambiguously wafted hand in the air. “A funeral?” she questioned back. 

His face immediately feel into a stoic expression quite alike a Grecian bust resting atop pedestal and he nodded solemnly. 

“But I guess burning a haystack makes it easier to find the needle,” he attempted to smile, the gravity of someone untraceable regret-like sentiment washing over his tone. 

Yein’s head ever so slightly and ever so slowly tilted to the side as she studied him. The words were left there unanswered as she processed them. 

“Well, bye,” Tag waved as he too made his way deeper into the labyrinth of Genius leaving Yein without her masculine columns to flank her. 

\---

“But I don’t _want_ to put the Baranov-Rossine on the pyre,” Sujeong whined, guttural and staunch, a slight tantrumming flick to her heels in the air as she laid, stomach flat against the mattress, on Seungmin’s bed. 

“I didn’t ask if you _wanted_ to,” Seungmin replied. “I asked where to find it.” 

“This is torture!” she exclaimed, flinging her body about listlessly on the comforter. “Cruel and unusual punishment! A toll too tall to pay…” she breathed out the words in a truncated staccato manner before sighing deep in her chest. “Too fall for surely a simple sinner like me.” 

“It’s either that or we could just push an empty raft out?” he suggested. 

“Empty?!” the girl rocketed up, all of a sudden seated with a ram-rod up her spine. “Are you joking?”

Seungmin’s mouth fell wide open, gaping at her. He dropped his chair down to all four of its legs, firmly planting the seat on the floor before propping his elbows upon his knees and leaning forward in awe to marvel at the other. 

“You are so utterly ridiculous,” he told her. “You’re more dramatic than Rubens.” 

Sujeong fell silent for a moment. “How fucking dare you,” she eventually whispered pointing a menacing finger at him, perfectly polished and sharpened nail. 

“Well…” Seungmin spread his arms out as he leaned back into the chair. “You could give me the Baranov-Rossine,” he offered, crossing his arms with a confident tut. 

“I would rather die,” she spat at him. 

“Look,” Seungmin tried to calm her. “We both know it’s not nearly as much fun to stage a Viking funeral if there’s nothing on the raft!” 

“But why does it have to be about Vladimir?!”

“This doesn’t have to be about your obsession with Russian Surrealism!” he immediately yelled back, frustration at its wit’s end, gushing over his walled bastion of better judgment like an overflown sink. “You’re just making it that way!” he accused her. 

“Leonora Carrington would be disappointed,” Yein threw back. 

Seungmin paused. “Okay, fuck you!” 

Yein narrowed her eyes. “Very disappointed,” she reiterated. 

“This is by far,” Seungmin started. “The worst thing that anyone-” 

The boy was abruptly cut off as the door opened into his seat, slamming into the wood and causing him to jump at the noise. Seungmin’s roommate came inside with an open bag slung around one arm toward his front, completely unzipped and spilling pens, golden ball-point pens, onto the floor as he rummaged inside. 

“Where’s my goddamn book, dude?” Villain asked the other as the door slammed closed behind him. 

“Why would I know?”

“I don’t know I- Oh, hi Sujeong,” he added in, mindlessly waving to the girl. “I just thought I left it on my desk but it-” he stopped in the middle of his scan of the room and latched onto something sitting in the window sill. “Found it,” he turned to his roommate with a smile holding a copy of Marx’s unpublished soho exile tales. 

The boy just as soon left the room, after stopping on his obliviously flustered whirlwind to ruffle Seungmin’s hair to which the shorter grumbled and swatted the other away, and stuffing the book into his bag. 

“He does realize he didn’t zip his bag, right?” Sujeong asked as the door closed again. 

“I swear he’s always losing something,” Seungmin sighed. “I mean he’d loose his own impulses if they weren’t duct-taped in front of his foresight.” 

Sujeong chuckled out a tiny little exhale. “He’s funny,” she said. “You ever miss Tag though?” 

“No, I don’t know. Not really,” the boy answered. “I think we’re better now that we don’t live together. More casual, you know?” 

“You literally commit white collar crime together. How is that casual?” 

“It’s a casual crime,” Seungmin defended. “That’s like the definition of white collar: casual.” 

“That’s not…” the girl began to argue, before realizing she didn’t in fact have an argument and suddenly, without warning, losing all of the conviction she had built up to do so. 

Seungmin gave her a look as if to say ‘Tell me I’m wrong’ and she honestly couldn’t find any response on the contrary to give. 

“I hate it so much when you’re right,” she grumbled. 

“Am I ever wrong?” 

She reached behind herself and fisted a pillow in her hand, lobbing the pieces of fluffed fabric at the owner’s head with a whip of her arm. Seungmin shrieked and grabbed for the thing as it came barreling toward his face. 

“In my own house!” Seungmin chastised her. 

“This is a dorm room!” 

“A dorm room that has Van Gogh’s Reformed Church in it you heathen!” he yelled. 

“Yeah!” Sujeong shot back. “But I didn’t throw it at Neunen! I threw it at you!” 

Seungmin came lunging out of his chair at her in the next instant, tackling her back onto the mattress as the door once again opened. 

“What did you forget this time?!” he threw into the air, pinned the girl to the bed with his limp body strewn haphazardly across her middle at an odd, perpendicular angle. 

“I don’t think I forgot anything?” a confused voice drifted back and both the others lifted their heads from the bed to glance at the door. 

Tag stood there, lithely taking up the space of the door’s threshold with lankly extended legs as he leaned into the frame. 

“Isn’t it time for A.A.?” he asked. 

Neither responded. 

“What?” he asked. 

“Is that what you call it?” Seungmin asked, wrestling his body off the bed. 

“Yeah,” Tag said, moving into the room. “Why?” 

“Is that where you tell people you’re going?” Sujeong tried to clarify. 

“Yeah,” Tag repeated. “Art Appreciation. A.A.” 

“Oh, honey no,” Sujeong breathed out in pity. “That’s not-”

“That’s a perfect name!” Seungmin enthusiastically clapped the other on the back, having strode over with a questionable skip in his step. “You should totally call it that.” 

“He’s telling people you’re in A.A.,” Sujeong deadpanned. 

“Oh,” Seungmin’s smile fell. “Oh no, that’s bad. Tag,” he turned back to the other, once again laying a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t tell people that.” 

Tag nodded and shrugged the shorter boy’s hand off, moving to seat himself at his ex-roommate’s desk. “Have we decided which paintings to burn yet?” 

Sujeong’s eyes widened as she turned to Seungmin “Paintings?”

“Yes,” the boy calmly responded. “Paintings.” 

“As in more than one…” the girl drawled. 

“As in more than one,” Seungmin replied, baiting her. 

“What about the Cezanne,” Tag added in. “I don’t know if I really _need_ to keep the Cezanne, you know?” 

“Is Cezanne a sad boi?” Sujeong murmured, acknowledge the other and snuffing the previous boy. “He paints with a lot of blues.” 

Seungmin huffed in the corner as she blatantly turned all her attention on Tag. 

“I mean you have a whole period they legitimately, like academically, call the dark Cezanne,” Tag said. “So yeah, I guess.” 

Sujeong’s face erupted in a devilish smile. “I fucking called it,” she whispered to herself.


	26. Heist VIII @ Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> last heist part one :)) 
> 
> (also please read up this caricature of a man known as Richard Abath, he's quite a ridiculously comical figure)

Three pairs of legs strewn themselves across a telltale beige and black check, revoltingly soft to the touch in a smooth wave of cashmere. The park was as idyllic as a park in the bustling midst of a city could be. Shockingly green grass, no doubt sprayed with the chemical colored aesthetic of pristine golf course perfection, and a smattering of well-dressed preps in their tucked polo collars flitted about, raincoats tucked under the careful crook of their elbows. It was supposed to rain later, hence the penchant for a Burberry blanket. Seungmin had insisted the brand fit the occasion like a fitted leather riding glove and Sujeong had been too distracted by the sudden, ephemeral, freedom from the Factory that she ran round like a crazed women sucking down the continental air with reckless lungs. 

Tag stretched his legs out, warm caramel slacks melted onto them. His foot came into light clinking contact with their large silver bucket and he pushed it, ever so gingerly, out of the way with a tiny sliding kick. 

He turned to the other boy. “Did we need the sterling wine chiller?” 

“What’s more la dolce vita than a sterling wine chiller?” Seungmin shrugged, leaning back onto his elbows and letting Sujeong head roll from his chest down into his lap where she lay. 

“Well, god,” Tag laughed. “If I had known we were paying homage to Slimm then I would have worn something a little more ostentatious.” 

“Can you pass the tapenade, dear?” Sujeong’s voice drifted up. 

Seungmin glanced down, smile still firmly on his face and gently reached across her to donate the small, scalloped glass jar into her awaiting hand. 

“Boston has terrible infrastructure,” Tag suddenly said, picking at a tuft of grass beside his hip. “It’s quite disappointing.” 

“Literally no one cares,” Sujeong told him as she attempted to pour more sangria into her glass, quickly realizing it was, in fact, empty and promptly deciding to snatch Seungmin’s glass.   
She flicked her wrist inward and drowned the thing swiftly in an attempt to clandestinely sneak the drink away. Seungmin, of course, noticed and said nothing. 

“You should,” Tag pouted, sweeping his head around the square, dissecting eyes hidden beneath oversized black sunglasses. “This city is a mess.” 

“More than New York?” the girl teased. 

Tag sighed. “People don’t expect New York to be pretty.” 

“More than London?”

“London is beautiful,” the boy defended. “Shut up.” 

“He’s kind of right,” Seungmin added in. “I mean there is a prison hotel here.” 

Both their heads swiveled to find the shorter boy in a comedic sweep of hair and neck, Sujeong sitting up fully to face him and Tag leaning forward on his long, bent legs knees risen toward the sky. 

“Yeah,” the boy continued. “It used to be a prison and now it’s a hotel.” 

“I thought you meant…” Tag started. 

“…it was still a prison,” Sujeong finished. 

“No,” Seungmin scoffed with a furrowed brow. “What’s wrong with you two? How kitsch would that be?”

It did indeed rain later, just between a spit and a light shower. They would have shown to the museum earlier, just inside the closing hours and the beginning dredges of the night shift, but Sujeong and Seungmin had found a restaurant they particularly liked that just so happened to serve their favorite Savignonese and three bottles later, Tag was attempting to sober them up before they made their way, at 5 o’clock in the goddamn forsaken morning, to the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum: the boy having managed to chorale the two others into the back of a rented town-car. When he chastised them for being 'deeply unprofessional' Sujeong had laughed and simply said they were 'rightly prioritized'. 

They stood now, the three of them swaddled in navy windbreakers and matching pants in the inner courtyard. Sujeong silently reached over and handed a scarf she had previously tucked around her neck to Tag. He wrapped his fingers around the dainty slice of fabric, the slight lights of the dimmed courtyard floods highlighting the McQueen print skulls upon it. Sujeong passed it to him and nodded to the sky. 

“It’s for the rain,” she said and waltzed over to where Seungmin was adjusting the heavy belt on his waist, jostling the gun in its cumbersome leather holster. 

Tag smiled and held the scarf aloft above his head in a tent to protect his ever coiffed hair, watching as Sujeong helped Seungmin fumble with his costume. 

“I always wanted to have a party in this courtyard,” Seungmin told his ex-roommate as he appeared behind them.

“Oh, how imperialist of you,” the boy tutted. 

“Dude, what the fuck,” Seungmin groaned. “I am literally just making a comment on the architecture.” 

“And I’m just making a comment on the colonial hierarchies imbedded in museums,” Tag answered, sweeping his arm out in a gesture to the Islamic stiles arches and tiles surrounding them. “Particularly _this_ museum.” 

“You are no fun.”

“Both of you are no fun,” Sujeong corrected, pushing passed them on her way to the window of the guard’s office. 

She paused and then swiveled to face them. 

“Why are we robbing the Gardener and not the Getty?” Sujeong asked. “I mean I know they’re updating their security because of the whole Kunsthal nightmare but challenges have never exactly deterred us.” 

“Because JPG was a horrid man and we have his oil portrait in the government lounge between Packouz and Diveroli,” Seungmin replied. 

Tag grabbed the shorter boy’s bicep, and maneuvered him around. “He went to Genius?” the boy seemed genuinely amazed. 

“No,” Seungmin smiled back. “He didn’t need to.” 

There was a faint scuffle and Seungmin caught Sujeong kicking her feet through the loose gravel with a deep set pout on her face, running her shoes into the ground with a heavy kick and a puffed lip. 

“Oh my god,” she groaned. “Can I just go in already?” 

“No!” Seungmin yelled back. 

“But I’m so fucking bored!” she whined. 

Seungmin’s jaw clenched tight. “Just wait!” he huffed. 

Sujeong stilled and crossed her arms, a jutted hip and narrowed eyes staring back at Seungmin in the disastrously early morning outside the Gardener. Tag shifted back and forth on his feet as they wordlessly held each other’s gazes in a battle of wills. A shrieking alarm responded out of the second story, causing Tag to flinch at the sound and Sujeong’s eyebrows to rocket up expectantly. Seungmin scoffed and threw out his arm toward the building in a motion to let her know his permission. She stuck her tongue out and bounded over to the door not even a second later. 

“Hey-uh, open up!” she yelled out, pounding her fist into the wood. “It’s the police!”

Seungmin eyed Tag in his periphery and laughed. “Could she possibly sound any less convincing?”

Tag shrugged. “I mean I’d open it.” 

The door cracked open, a wave of sticky, warm air wafting out. A man’s disheveled face appeared in the space, blinking into Sujeong’s flashlight which she had poised at her shoulder. 

“Holy fuck you guys are fast,” the guard mumbled. “That thing like just went off.” 

“We were…” Sujeong paused and glanced over her shoulder at the two boys, mouthing a couple obscenities at them and then returning a calm, smiling face to the man. “…in the area. Decided to pop by.” 

“Yeah, well,” the guard stopped to yawn. “Some of us like our jobs I guess?” 

“Can you-uh, show me where the alarm trigger is?” she smiled, stepping inside behind the weary, unsuspecting young man and reading his name tag. “…Mr. Abath,” she added. 

“There’s like a circuit breaker or whatever in the back,” the guy drawled. “I mean it’s only supposed to go off if someone gets close but I guess…” he paused, hand reaching up to lazily rub at the bag of his neck, palm slapping sliding onto the skin. “Maybe the storm? I don’t know, man?” 

Tag stepped inside next, eyeing the tiny monitor and alarm buttons behind the desk and nodded to Sujeong. “Want to show me that breaker?” he asked the guard. 

As soon as the man had turned around, Tag shot forward and hauled the man’s wrist together, pinching the shoulder blades together roughly and slapping a pair of handcuffs on before the man could struggle too much. 

“Hey! What is this?!” the guard bellowed, shaking his shoulders in an attempt to release Tag from his back. “What the hell?!” 

“There’s an outstanding warrant for your arrest,” Seungmin monotonously lied on the spot. “You have the right to remain silent.” 

“Is this about the gig last Sunday?” the man blurted. “It’s wasn’t even my shit! It was Tommy’s!” 

“I don’t give a fuck about Tommy,” Tag said, and shoved the guy onto the floor at the threshold into the backroom. 

“What’s that smell?” Sujeong sniffed the air and then turned toward the man on the ground. “Is he… drunk?” she murmured in disbelief. 

“Are you drunk?” Seungmin asked the guard. 

“Does he not take his job seriously at all?” Tag scoffed. 

“Do you not take your job seriously at all?” Seungmin shot at the poor guard. 

“Nah, are you kidding,” the man drawled. “Fuck this shit. I’m in a band.” 

“You’re in a band?” Sujeong’s disapproval inserted; the skepticism from her voice practically bathed the words until they drowned. 

“What did you think? That I wanted guard empty ass museums all night?” the guy balked, uncomfortably adjusting his hands behind his back with a grimace as the cuffs tugged on his arms. “This is boring as shit.” 

Seungmin and Sujeong looked over at Tag’s mournful exhaled, the boy appearing very visibly upset by the man’s words. “I am… so disillusioned,” he whispered to himself. “Never question your dreams. It’s just like learning there’s a joint KFC-Taco Bell in Guantanamo Bay.” 

“I…?” Seungmin drifted off, the words not escaping him for they were never there at all. 

“Is that a bad thing?” Sujeong asked him. “I don’t exactly follow, sweetie.” 

The guard rattled on the floor, wrestling his hands around where they pinned themselves at the small of his back. “You’re not really cops, are you?” he questioned them. “Who the fuck are you people?” 

“Shut up, Abath!” Tag spat. “I’m going through something!” 

“Richard!” a voiced called out from down the hall, echoing off the walls along with the faint drift of the upstairs alarm making its way down in an incessantly rhythmic shrill scream. “Is someone down there with you?!” 

“Hestand!” Abath yelled back. “It’s _not_ the police!” 

“What?!” the second guard’s voice grew louder as his footfalls sped up, a slight jog as he made his way to the four of them. 

“IT’S _NOT_ THE POL-” Abath was cut off by Sujeong’s hand over his mouth. 

The girl held his head against her hip, firmly planting the vice of her hand over his face as she held one hand out toward Tag in a grabby motion. He looked at her confused for a moment before handing back the scarf from earlier which she used to gage the poor guard, knotting the thing behind his head and in the greasy mess of hair. The man struggled as she dragged him into the backroom, his legs kicking out in squeaky smears of his second rate dress shoes on the floor, sending black scuffs out behind his body as Sujeong pulled him. 

Seungmin stepped over behind the door as the steps of the second guard drew nearer, making eye contact with Tag and holding a finger to his lips. Just as a pair of feet made their presence in the doorway, a voice calling out in alarm at Tag stood in the middle of the room, Seungmin’s arm swung out and clocked the man directly in the head. He stumbled back with a curse, clutching his nose and retreating back into the corridor. Seungmin spun himself around the open door and after the second guard, quickly side-swiping the man’s face, clipping his ear. He managed to disorient the man and slam him into the wall, snapping his own cuffs on the second guard and hauling him back into the room with Tag and Sujeong. His shallowed breathes were joined by the second man, Hestand, groaning in discomfort at his ringing ears. 

“Are none of you good guards?!” Tag accused him. “Do they purposefully hire awful people to guard their museums!? Do they want us to steal 500 million dollars’ worth of aesthetic culture?!” 

The man only groaned in response and soon they had both offensively undertrained guards locked in the backroom and the entire Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum to themselves.


	27. HEIST VIII continued

The predawn was cooking itself down with disarming ease as they thundered through the vacant room, adorning themselves with armfuls of old master’s masterpieces. The room they had chosen, one of the many housing the relatively small, gifted personal collection of an illustriously inclined woman was draped in shiny green fabric that glittered the sconce light off it in refracted glimmers. It was like an old castle foyer, littered with tufted chairs and old wooden Wunderkammer dotted throughout the space. 

Tag had not stopped her dramatically mournful sighs as they made their way upstairs. “I can’t honestly believe they filled a room with half a billion dollars and hired Mr. Wannabe Hendrix to guard it.” 

“I don’t know,” Sujeong drawled, depositing herself onto a red and gold chair from the German Renaissance, crossing her legs at the knees and swinging her foot in the air as she leaned forward in an elegant fold befitting of a court scene. “I get more of a Bob Weir vibe,” she said. 

“Does that make any difference?”

“No, I suppose not,” she acquiesced. “It’s disappointingly negligent either way.” 

Seungmin hummed from his place at the window, stood beside a marble column, hands flat on the sill to peek out into the courtyard on his tippy-toes. He swiveled after a moment and found Tag, despondently dropped shoulders, just standing before the bare table set in the middle of the room, resting blank against the brick floor. 

“It’s better than the Kunsthal.” 

“Everyone’s better than the Kunsthal,” the boy deadpanned back. 

“At least they’re trying to improve their security,” Seungmin argued. “They’re updating all their alarms and shit.” 

Tag raised his eyebrows in a confidently defensive gesture and strode over to the wall where Titian hung high on the wall. He didn’t separate his gaze from the other boy’s as he extended his hand and pocked it into the canvas, standing there in the silence as he maintained contact with the piece. 

“Well,” Seungmin huffed, throwing his hands in the air. “They can’t fix everything!” 

“You know what,” Sujeong piped up, now slung back so far in the chair along the wall that she almost melted out of it with her languidly curved spine and splayed legs. “I think, out of spite, that we should just leave it.” 

“The Titian?” Tag asked. 

“Yeah. Like… how confusing would that be?” she smiled. 

Tag opened his mouth as if to respond and then closed it again with an exhale as he shifted his weight. He nodded to himself in thought and then opened his mouth again, taking a few seconds of silence to gather his words. 

“Are you saying you want to leave a multi-million dollar legacy in this deplorable museum because of the humour?” 

“Yes,” Sujeong answered immediately. 

A wide smile split the boy’s face open. “I knew there was a reason we were friends.” 

“I thought it was my charming personality,” she mocked, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she stood. 

“Oh, is that what you call it?” Seungmin threw at her from the other side of the room, having placed a large black duffel underneath Vermeer’s _The Concert_.

“You two are so goddamn lucky I’m here.” 

Tag snorted from her other side and the girl whipped around to find him leaning against the table with an amused expression, watching them. Both palms sat flat upon the same green cloth of the walls thrown over the surface as a tablecloth, elbows locked straight as his long body angled itself over the table, one leg bent in a leisurely cock of his hip. 

“What?” Sujeong questioned, almost offended in tone. 

“I mean you’re not wrong,” he said. “Last time Seungmin stabbed me.” 

“I thought you were over that?!” the other boy groaned, dropping his head onto the wall next to the large golden frame housing the Vermeer. 

“I am,” Tag continued. “But that doesn’t mean isn’t funny anymore,” he added with a smirk. 

Seungmin held up the small knife in his hand and waved it at the other in threat before resuming his work cutting the work from the wall. Sujeong had finished rolling up _Manet’s Chez Tortoni_ and tucking into a bag before she paused at the next piece in an uncharacteristically quiet stillness. She stood, frozen and penitent, in front of a Rembrandt. It was _The Storm on the Sea of Galilee_ with a vibrant streak of warm light falling onto the flailing mast of a doomed ship rocked to death in the choppy waters of a morning tempest. She frowned at it, her bottom lip unconsciously jutting out and her brows knitting together in a slight discomfort. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Tag asked her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder, and coming to rest at her side. 

Her head lulled to the side and she didn’t respond right away, studying the piece without really looking. Sujeong eventually picked her hand up into the air and waved him off. 

“It just reminds me of someone is all,” she said and plunged her knife into the lower left corner in a deft hack. 

Tag had just cut out _Cortege aux Environs de Florence_ by Degas when he noticed Sujeong tuck the Rembrandt with the most delicate fingers and a sad smile on her face. He began to walk back over to her before Seungmin’s voice gave me pause. 

“I feel like he’s judging me.” 

“Who?” he asked, eyes still worryingly latched to Sujeong. 

“Rembrandt.” 

He looked over at his ex-roommate and saw him locked in a staring contest with a self-portrait, hand clasped in front of him in an uncomfortable formality much alike the one he recalled from his days of involuntary attendance at a ballroom dancing class. 

“Why would Rembrandt be judging you?” 

Seungmin blinked and turned away from the canvas, seeking out Tag’s face in the room and stopping on the other with a confused look. “I said that out loud?” 

“What is up with you two today?” the other laughed. “Did you steal that guard’s secret stash or something?” 

“Look another Rembrandt!” Seungmin called out, waltzing passed Tag and completely ignoring him with purposeful steps. “Tag, it’s you.” 

There on the wall between two now empty frames, sat _A Lady and Gentleman in Black_ which did, amazingly, depict a lady and a gentleman in black. The woman perched in her seat with a poised hand as if about to stand and the man held a subtly self-confident pose, with the slightest inclination of a raised shoulder making its way to the front and an ever so marginally extended leg beneath it in parallel. 

The boy in question immediately dropped into a modelled pose of the man with a professionally masked face and glanced at Seungmin in challenge. The boy just smiled and fished out his phone to take a picture. Lord knows where he could put a picture of a Tag mockingly posed after a Rembrandt in the middle of the Isabella Stewart as it was actively being robbed, but why not? For progeny’s sake. 

They had all previously, as they mapped out the heist in the weeks prior laid out on Sujeong’s floor between their gluttonous spoils of effort, decided their number one priority was Govert Flinch’s _Landscape With an Obelisk_. Now Flinck was not necessarily the most well-known or well adored painter of the Dutch Golden Age. He was born into a different profession and, dreams be damned, decided to abandon the security of a life as a silk merchant to escape into the glorious world of art. He became a student of Rembrandt in time and continued his diplomatic connections well into his career and married a Dutch heiress.

Tag bumped his shoulder into Seungmin as they stood before it now, knives in hand and admiring it in the space before they liberated it from the gaudy frame. “If you’re Flinch then I’ll be your Backer.”

Tag felt Seungmin laugh silently at his side and smiled. 

“You know, I don’t…” Seungmin paused, not looking at Tag but still glued to the painting. “I’m sorry I never really gave you a second chance,” he finished. 

“No, you did,” Tag replied, peaking at the other’s profile from the corner of his eye. “I just might have needed ten,” he added. 

“It’s not like I resented you or anything it’s just…”

“I was a bit much,” Tag finished. 

Seungmin finally tore his gaze away and found Tag’s face open and softly smiling at him. “And I was a bit impatient.” 

“You might be the first person that ever really called me out on impulse.” 

“You might be the first person that ever made me regret not granting excuses.” 

No one can ever really know you until they find something that displeases them. No one could possibly ever know a whole person without one thing, one small little thing at least, that wasn’t perfect. They just so happened to start there, at the displeasures and the grating idiosyncrasies. They just happened to start at the cold shoulders and the snubbed quips before making their way towards something that might resemble friendship though neither would ever dare label it as such for old persistent habits of rivalry running strong like rip currents in the Bering strait. But even seas can change, and at the turn of the 21st century, the Bering’s deep blue hue gave way to a shining light aqua. 

“I love that you two are getting along now,” Sujeong’s voice interrupted them. “But where the FUCK is the second Degas program?” 

“It’s literally right next to the other one!” Seungmin chided her, immediately walking over with a pointed hand and incredulous judgement. “Under the Jockeys,” he continued, gesturing to the piece in question. “Are you blind?” 

“The wallpaper is too loud!” she defended. “I can’t think straight! Like come on just paint your walls white, you conceited attention seeker!”

“Hey,” Seungmin stopped her. “Isabella does not deserve that.” 

“I don’t care!” Sujeong yelled. “I hate her wallpaper!” 

“We’re taking sketches now?” Tag asked. 

“The thing is, I already have one of the little dancers,” the girl explained. “It’s like… completing the collection.” 

Seungmin rolled his eyes and wordlessly retuned to retrieve the Flinck as the girl excitedly slashed into the sketches. Tag had disappeared into another room and they both assumed he had gone downstairs to mock the guards for entertainment. They packed up all the selected works, zipped them into two different duffels, and made their way down to the courtyard where Tag was, surprisingly, nowhere to be seen and the door behind which they had stowed the guards was still firmly shut. 

“What on earth is he doing?” Seungmin huffed. 

There was great big thundering sound that came out of the building, and Tag came out a few beats later as if summoned by the other boy, with a third duffle slung across his body. He panted, catching his breath and clutched a small figurine in his hands. 

“What the fuck took you so long?” Sujeong demanded, yanking him out of the door’s threshold and into the morning air. 

“I was getting this!” Tag held up the silver figurine triumphantly. 

Neither of the other two made a comment, standing there with exhaustedly vexed expressions as they looked at him. 

“It’s a griffin!” Tag added. 

Seungmin’s eyes narrowed in confusion at the object and Sujeong sighed. 

“What?” he asked, growing increasingly defeated. 

“That’s an eagle,” Sujeong said, pinching the bridge of her nose. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s an eagle,” she said. 

Tag looked back over at his figurine, holding it up next to his face to study at it. “I thought it was griffin…” he mumbled. 

“Tag, that’s an eagle,” Seungmin added in agreement with Sujeong.

“Is it?”

“Yes.” 

“Really?”

“IT’S A FUCKING EAGLE!” Sujeong yelled at him in a huff. 

Tag glanced back at her. “I’m not an ornithologist,” he mocked. 

Sujeong looked like she was about to blow a casket and so Seungmin stepped in to distract the other boy. “Where did you even get that?” he asked. 

“Oh I was trying to take a Napoleonic flag,” Tag answered. “But the screws were really long and I got bored so I just snapped this little guy off the top.”

“Okay, time to go.” Sujeong blurted, swirling her hand in the air in a rallying motion and turning her back on the boys not waiting before she stated walking away into the waiting city. 

Tag unzipped the duffle a bit and held open the sides to Seungmin. “I also got this Shang vase,” he added proudly. 

“Oh my god, we’re going,” Seungmin groaned and grabbed the boy’s wrist, hauling him in tow. 

“I thought we pulled a Stockholm and set all those cars on fire?” Tag whined. 

“No,” Seungmin shot a look at him as he tried to catch up to Sujeong. “We told you we _weren’t_ doing that!” 

“It’s like you two expect me to remember everything.”


	28. Rise of the Rebel Angels

In a chair of generous detail which provided no more comfort in its relentless ambition for ornamentation, the lonely figure of a young boy quietly breathed in the waning hours of the night. The last grips of stars fluttered away in the sky as the sun seeped into the space on feeble legs, dusting its knees across the floorboards in a languid crawl. Dozens of papers scrawled with red and black ink alike, some blue thrown in for good measure, scattered off the surface of the desk as the arms, which previously held themselves up against all forces of exhaustion, finally succumbed to the persistently ignored release of sleep and crumbled downward. Tag slumped at his desk with an unnatural curve of his spine and, undoubtedly, an uncomfortably twisted neck, eyes firmly shut in a contorted scowl of discomfort. 

The sunlight streaming through the window, filtering its way around old roman busts lining the shelf before it, brought with it a gentle hand and the whispered voice melting away the stress that furrowed his brow. Warmth blossomed in his chest and found its way out into the fingertips which brushed softly through his ruffled hair in lazy little swirls. A groan resounded as the body shifted, and yet another book, another pen, and another paper tumbled to the floor at their feet. Seungmin placed down a cup of coffee beside the other’s elbow on the library desk, the surface having been near cleared by Tag’s short and fitful slumber, and tapped the boy’s shoulder. 

“Tag,” he murmured. 

Tag huffed in response, burrowing his mop of unruly bedhead deeper into the arms folded across the desk in front of him, cheek pressed flatly against the old, scarred wood. 

“I have coffee,” Seungmin voice coaxed the tired muscles to move slightly but no response came. 

Tag groaned again, shifting himself to burrow his head down a bit deeper into the desk where it sat nested in his arms. 

“It’s nearly 9,” Seungmin continued, a bit loader than before. 

Tag’s eyes shot open in realization, blinking away sleep in a frantic flicker of eyelids fighting the collapsing weight of his fatigue. He willed his body to stand, creaking and popping his worn joints as he anxiously grabbed at the scattered pages littering the floor. 

“Christ! God! Why didn’t I number these?!” 

“Because you’re lazy,” the other offered with a shrug. 

Tag didn’t respond, kicking his legs out in a languid stretch and brushing his socked toes against the litany of stacked frames sitting under his desk: a Monet, a Turner, a Hogarth. Tag absolutely adored Hogarth. The frame’s edges sat one before another before another like book spines all lined up nice and pretty in the library. 

Seungmin placed a hand on the table and drew his face in towards the sleep, brooding boy. “Oh come on, you know I’m kidding.” 

“You better be kidding,” Tag grumbled, feet picking at the gilded wood. “I carried your Phoenician bust out of Montreal.” 

“Yes, you did,” Seungmin nodded back softly. “And thank you for that.” 

The boy moved to kneel beside the mess of papers on the floor, deft fingers gathering up the pages in his gentle hands as he held them out to Tag. 

“It’s okay,” he smiled. “I’ll help.” 

Their hands busied themselves filling up with random equations that seemed to weigh a thousand pounds as they sorted them, growing heavier against their palms as they both incessantly glanced at the clock every few seconds as if it was conspiring to nudge its hands a little faster along the way to an impending end. 

“Do you have anything on my projection models?” Tag asked the other, shuffling through his work in a desperate attempt. 

“Here,” Seungmin handed over two pages to him. 

The boy suddenly stopped and sunk into his spine with a deep seated sigh. His hands drew down from fisting his hair and moved to push into the fleshy fat at his cheeks before limply cascading off his jawline into his lap. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Seungmin reached over to pat the other’s leg. “You’ve got time.” 

Tag rolled his head up and latched his eyes onto his ex-roommate’s. “Yeah, but I waited all night to finish it and now I’m kind of fucked, aren’t I?” 

“No,” Seungmin corrected him in an uncharacteristically patient statement. “You’re not. You have like…” the boy checked the watch resting on his wrist, “eight minutes.” 

Tag almost growled, a raw and frustrated reverb rising up his throat. “The quad is an eleven minute walk from here on a good day.” 

“So don’t walk.” 

The look Tag shot him was pure livid vexation: that or the look of a dying man forcefully pleading they didn’t make a martyr at his funeral. Seungmin stood up with the back half of Tag’s research paper and offered the other a hand up from the floor. For a second it looked like Tag might give up and simply let his gangly legs melt into the wooden boards tracing the length of the room. Somehow, someway, coffee discarded and desk a mess, Tag now stood at the door taking in a healthy yawn like a man who had more time than he did. Seungmin gaze a small and tireless pat on his cheek and pushed him out the door into the streaming morning light of the hall. 

“Good luck,” the boy called out as Tag all but threw himself down the hallway. 

The door was almost closed, just a sliver of the sunlight streaming in before Tag’s hand caught the doorknob and yanked it open to reveal a frazzled and confused Seungmin hand falling away from the door. 

“What are you doing?!” the boy sputtered. “You have to-”

Tag leaned forward in a quick lunge and placed a kiss on the very edge of the other’s mouth just along the crooked corner of his lips, pulling away with a wink and taking off before the other could react. 

“You can’t just do that, Youngtaek!” Seungmin’s voice followed him out the door. 

Yein and Hoyeon were waiting for him, empty handed and curled into the arches that lined the courtyard just beneath the overpass which connected the government and clandestine departments. The bio-chem building was going through a _de-cleansing_ and a _de-chemicalization_ after someone had spilled some sort of substance all over the second floor labs last night and it seeped through the entirety of the ground floor via the duct system. Why had a noxious chemical been near the vents in the first place? Well, that wasn’t a top priority for investigation. The thing was, the school didn’t know what exactly the stuff was: in a loose guess yes, but in a precise sense… not even close. And hence, the bio-chem kids were subject to braving the triad in order to turn in end of term assignments. 

Hoyeon waved him over, swinging his legs over the side and planting his feet firmly in the flowerbed underneath the stone sill. 

“Hey, Tag!” the boy yelled out. “Way to make it with like one minute to spare!”

“I just turned it in,” Tag deadpanned, pointing over his shoulder at the economics building as he walked over to join them. “So you shut up now, thanks.” 

Once he made it close enough, Yein reached out and punched him in the shoulder in the least bit affectionate gesture. 

“I thought you were going to miss it!” she chided him. 

Tag scoffed, throwing his head back a little and regretting the slight crick in his neck that tense at the motion with a wince. 

“I didn’t even miss the Christmas final and I was barely able to walk,” he responded. 

“Yeah, you didn’t,” Yein argued back, crossing her arms with an indignantly quirked brow. “Because I made sure you didn’t miss it.” 

Hoyeon raised a hand. “Don’t I get some credit for that?”

“No,” Yein and Tag shot at him indifferently. 

“Why were you late anyways?” Hoyeon asked. 

“Overslept.” 

“And you overslept because…?” Yein prompted. 

Tag breathed out a long exhale and reached his hands up to link behind his head in a cocky lean. “Ain’t no rest for international art thieves.” 

“You’re a handful,” Yein accused, but there wasn’t an ounce of anything besides endearment in her voice.

“I am, most certainly, nothing less than two,” Tag drawled back. 

There was a sharp crack and then a window on the first floor of the government building shattered, raining glass shards down into the grass below, followed by the flinging lump of a body thrown out after. The body thumped into the bushes with a heavy snapping sound as the branches gave way underneath, a light oof and series of groans joining when the figure hit the ground. Then Jangjun’s mangled hair was emerging from the bushes, shaking leaves from his head as he frantically swept his eyes around the courtyard, searching for something. He stumbled up and Tag finally noticed the boy cradled an unidentified object to his chest, wrapped in a beige cashmere sweater. 

“Do NOT tell Mijoo you saw me!” he yelled at Tag across the grass. 

“What are you doing?!” Tag called out, but the other didn’t respond, running off toward the other side of the quad and yanking open the economic door which he swiftly disappeared into. 

Hoyeon stared off after him. “Wait… who is that?”

Yein placed a light hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I don’t think you want to know.” 

“But he…”

Then the government door leading to the courtyard burst open and Mijoo came sprinting out on impossibly high heels that seemed to rocket her long legs across the pavement like stilts. She thundered over to them and placed herself right before Yein with a scowl so deep set, the younger girl wasn’t convinced it wasn’t permanent. 

“Where is he?” 

All three of the second years wordlessly pointed in the direction of the economics building with little more prompting and watched the girl stalk off after her brother. 

“Oh my god,” Yein’s eyes widened in realization a second later. “He took her…”

“What?” Hoyeon implored, leaning toward her. “What did he take?” 

Yein didn’t answer, choosing to leave her jaw just that little bit agape, eyes focused onto the econ doors with a lasered apprehension. 

“Yein, what did he-”

“I kissed Seungmin,” Tag simply said. 

“WHAT?” Hoyeon flung around to the face the other boy, throwing his earlier inquiry over his shoulder to make room for whatever Tag had just said. 

“When the hell did this happen?” Yein joined, jutting herself out from the arch to lean around Hoyeon’s side toward Tag, hair falling in a curtain over the empty air. “And why didn’t I hear about it?” 

“This morning.” 

“Why are so calm about it?” Hoyeon breathed out. 

Tag’s gaze flitted over the empty courtyard: a few flowers leisurely blowing in the breeze in a soft dance as the sea air rustled their petals, the broken bushes along the government fortress scattered on the grass in tiny twig fragments amidst the glass, and two utterly baffled second year bio-chemistry students prodding his side with their questions like it was Watergate all over again. 

“It’s been a long time coming,” Tag mused, sending them a smile. 

Yein sent him an odd look, head tilting to the side. “I thought he used to hate you?”

Tag shrugged. “What can I say? White collar crime bonds people.”


End file.
